ROME – Suzuki Motor Corporation believes in the growing business of flying taxis. The Japanese company has invested in SkyDrive Inc., a company based in Toyota City, in Aichi Prefecture, a popular developer of “flying cars” and “cargo drones”. In March 2022, SkyDrive and Suzuki entered into a partnership in order to collaborate in the commercial and technological segments of “flying cars” and from that date a future collaboration and related commercial development are under consideration.
Thanks to this investment, the two companies will further strengthen their partnership, cooperating with other investing companies with the aim of aiming at spreading a new form of mobility based on “flying cars”. Under the agreement, Suzuki will collaborate in the development of technologies that optimize vehicle efficiency thanks to the basic policy known as “Sho-Sho-Kei-Tan-Bi”, which is the abbreviation for five Japanese terms that can be translated with : “More compact, less, lighter, more contained, more orderly”, pillars of Monozukuri, the manufacturing culture of the house of the uplift.
Flying cars and taxis, a 65 billion dollar market
In recent years, the demand for personal transportation has increased and has focused on relieving congestion, streamlining traffic in urban areas and changing the needs of “transportation as needed”. Thus, with this new partnership Suzuki, in addition to providing mobility from the sea to the mountains through the nautical, motorcycling and motoring sectors, will undertake initiatives to realize the air mobility business.
Xpeng X2, the first electric flying car
by Federico Pesce
For its part, Suzuki will help shape the future mobility society, in which personal transport and eco-friendly mobility will be required. In short, even if the real application of the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVtol) may still appear far away, the experimentation continues at full speed with a succession of various tests in all conditions, while the analysts’ estimates foresee a strong development in the coming years. . (Maurilio Rigo)