Ability Auto Body & Paint

Will a Toyota Flying "Car" Open the 2020 Olympics?

Toyota has started providing significant amounts of capital for a company that wants to create a flying "car" that will kick off the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Their ultimate goal is to have the driver light the Olympic cauldron with the flying vehicle. At Ability Auto Body & Paint, we know cars are self-driving themselves now and through recent efforts with companies such as Google, Tesla and now Toyota, we know that we will one day see self-driving cars in San Diego, CA. 

Every country’s opening ceremony is an full-blown extravaganza, reflecting their unique culture of the country hosting the Olympics. Japan is already working on their opening ceremonies, even though they are still a little less than three years away and now it seems this incredible invention (still in development) could be one of the highlights of the 2020 Olympics.

This flying "car" isn’t really a car – it’s basically a drone big enough for a person to sit in. The company that is designing and building it is Cartivator Resource Management and they recently held a trial flight where they invited the media. The results will positive enough that Toyota gave the company another round of funding.

With these new flying vehicles becoming real, it's probably fair to say that we’re still quite a way off before we will be seeing people "driving" around in these things. The people at Cartivator  have a schedule planned all the way to 2050, where they will allegedly "Realize a world where anyone can fly in the sky anytime and anywhere.”

Their plan also forecasts that the vehicles will be commercially available in 2023, with mass production starting seven years later. While that may sound quite very ambitious indeed, it’s an interesting proposition for this invention.

There are already a handful of other ‘flying cars’ currently in development, and they all follow the 'half car, half something else' concept. The Aeromobil is half auto and half plane while the PAL-V is half car and the other half is helicopter.

If this flying/driving contraption is going to be used for opening ceremonies, there is one last question to ask--will the flaming torch be on the outside of the vehicle where it could blow out or on the inside where it could set everything on fire? We're happy that we're not the ones making that decision and I hope they get that part all worked out well before the 2020 Olympics!

Sources: USA Today, MSN and Google News