Check Out Toyota's Bizarre Drone-Like 'Flying Car'

Flying cars aren’t quite ready to change the world, if this latest video of Toyota’s early-stage prototype is anything to go by.

The Japanese firm is working with a small company called Cartivator Resource Management on a single-person flying car concept that they hope to have ready for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. As you can see in the video, it does have wheels, but it doesn’t really fly very well yet…

In the short clip we see the assembly, which looks like little more than an oversized drone with eight rotors and a power cable running directly to the powertrain, rising vertically off the ground to around head height before losing balance and crashing back to earth. It’s possibly the increasing weight and pull factor of the power cable itself that destabilises the unit, but clearly it’s still unable to compensate.

So while you’re not going to be able to buy a jam-busting flying car for a few years yet, with the might of Toyota behind projects like this, surely it’s going to be a realistic prospect. At least, it might until air traffic control and defence laws shut it right down. Lately it doesn’t take much imagination to picture some of the potential risks…

Via: Tech Crunch