A 'Flying Car' May Be Lighting Up the Olympic Torch for Tokyo 2020

As the world take a 4-year rest from the concoction of various sports from the Olympic Games, engineers, on the other hand, are keeping their hands busy in preparation for the Tokyo 2020. Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corporation is backing a start-up called Cartivator to develop a 'flying car' that is intended to light up the torch for the said Tokyo 2020 Olympics. It looks like a homemade drone for now but the engineers hope to develop the flying vehicle into a small car that can fit a driver in it.

At the moment, the alleged flying car is still in its basic form made with aluminum framing and eight propellers. From this test video, the DIY flying car only took off less than 2 meters above ground and hovered for 4 seconds until it crashed back down.

Toyota gave Cartivator 42.5 million yen or $386,000 to develop the "Sky Drive". The start-up's ultimate goal is to obtain a fluent transition from driving to flying, pretty much like the DeLorean DMC-12 from the science-fiction movie Back To The Future.

"I always loved planes and cars. And my longtime dream was to have a personal vehicle that can fly and go many places", said Tsubasa Nakamura, Cartivator's project leader.

The team of engineers is currently developing a better flying car design with the money Toyota has sponsored them with. Although the limited capabilities of their flying car model, for now, doesn't seem convincing at all, they are aiming to have the first manned flight as early as 2019.

Via Yuri Kageyama