Right around the time Toyota asked everyone to stop calling it boring, the company gave a startup called Cartivator more than $350,000 for its “flying car” that’s supposed to be commercialized by 2020. But the flying car is actually more like a drone, and it, um, doesn’t work very well so far.
The flying drone-car made several attempts at flight with basketballs attached to the bottom of it to soften the crash landings, according to the Associated Press. The AP reports that part of the car’s frame later broke, damaging a propeller and forcing an early end to the test.
Here’s one such crash landing, via an AP reporter:
Even if the startup can get this thing to stay in the air, it’ll be a cramped flight. The 30 volunteers on the project claim that it’ll have a top speed of 62 mph at up to around 33 feet off of the ground, and that this drone-car is the “world’s smallest flying car” at 9.5 feet long and 4.3 feet wide. That’s a lot smaller than a Smart ForTwo.
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The startup plans for its drone-car thing to be ready in time to light the torch at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020, but the person running the show may end up having to put the torch on the ground.
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