Suzuki to develop its first ever Flying-Car

Japanese automaker Suzuki has joined the race to develop a flying car by announcing a commercial partnership with SkyDrive.

Picture Credit: PcMag 

In a jointly released statement, the pair confirmed they would work together to bring an eVTOL (electric vehicle take-off and landing aircraft) to market.

Although Suzuki does not sell cars in the U.S. anymore – it pulled out of America in 2012 – it is a significant player on the global scene, particularly in India, where its subsidiary Maruti had a share of more than 50% of a market that exceeded 3 million cars in 2021.

SkyDrive is a Japanese company based in Shinjuku, Tokyo, specializing in new forms of air mobility.

The statement was light on specific detail but confirmed that the two would look to “collaborate in areas of business and technology that include R&D, planning of manufacturing and mass production systems and development of overseas markets with an initial focus on India.”

Although only established in 2018, SkyDrive has already made a major impact in the eVTOL arena. In 2020, it created headlines when it became the first company to conduct a successful manned test flight, when its single-seat SD-03 took to the air in Aichi, Japan.

Although a human pilot was at the controls, a computer system was responsible for flight stability and safety. The SD-03 featured two sets of counter-rotating rotors to the front and two more sets at the rear, with each rotor driven by its own electric motor to protect against failure.