The future of personal air travel is almost upon us – or perhaps sit in it. If you’re at CES 2022 in Las Vegas, look for SkyDrive’s Model SD-03 ultra-light, compact flying machine tucked away in the usually busy Eureka Park start-up exhibit area.
With its eight horizontal rotors, the SkyDrive vehicle resembles more of a giant drone than a transport that can carry a human. It’s tiny – even by drone standards. The EV flyer is just 4 meters tall by 4 meters wide by 2 meters tall. That’s correct; the Model SD-03 will not have you standing inside it. It has room for just one person, to be precise. You’ll have to be both a passenger and a pilot if you’re ever allowed to fly inside it.
Despite its tiny size, it can lift approximately 1,000 pounds into the air (that includes the air taxi’s own weight). The SkyDrive Model SD-03 may fly at a maximum cruising speed of between 24 and 31 mph after taking off vertically. That is a very leisurely flight rate.
“What we want to see in the future is that SkyDrive’s emission-free vehicles take off from and land in your parking lot and helipads atop buildings, making door-to-door air travel a realistic choice of daily urban transportation.”
-Takehiro Sato, SkyDrive Chief Operating Officer
