We’ve all seen the TV shows and movies where everyone seems to be driving a flying car. It always felt like the stuff of science fiction, but it looks like it’s slowly becoming a reality. In fact, over in Japan, they are inching towards such a future thanks to Japan’s SkyDrive who recently successfully tested a flying car which got off the ground with a human pilot in the seat.
According to Tomohiro Fukuzawa, who heads up the SkyDrive effort, he hopes that this flying car can be made into an actual product by 2023, although we are a bit skeptical about that somewhat optimistic timeline. He does, however, acknowledge that there are various safety concerns that need to be addressed before that happens, where people have to feel safe while riding it.
Right now, the machine that they tested out can hover in the air for about 5-10 minutes, which isn’t very long, but still an impressive feat anyway. We’re not sure if the future will ever come with flying cars will become the new standard, especially since cost could be a factor. If it’s too expensive to own one, then no one will want one.
For the more immediate future, self-driving cars are slowly gaining acceptance, thanks to companies like Tesla who have introduced self-driving like features to their cars. We’ve also seen how companies like Google are also working on the technology, and it’s kind of a badly-kept secret that Apple is interested as well.