Land of the flying car
People in Europe and the US tend to think of Japan as a high-tech country, highly digitised and very progressive. Reality however is different. The Japanese are very risk-aware and careful, which slows down innovation and makes strategic change difficult to initiate and roll out.
Mobility? No mobility.
Ask anyone in the fleet industry about today’s most hyped concept, and “mobility” is the reply. Not so in Japan. The leading companies in the fleet industry (Toyota and Nissan on OEM side, Orix and Sumitomo on the leasing side) have been extremely conservative in developing concepts or solutions for the Japanese market.
Similarly, the Japanese client is also reluctant to make changes in their fleet strategies and hesitate to use alternative solutions, such as car sharing, ride hailing or carpooling.
Wake-up call
The industry as well as the Government have started to understand that there’s a risk for Japan to end up behind the “mobility” curve. Hoping to catch up and become eventually a major player, private and public investment is now coming together; flying cars is one of the initiatives.
Future Air Mobility
Jokingly called the “flying car”, we’re talking here about a big drone-type 2 seater, that has been developed by engineering start-up CART!VATOR (with a “!” to express their enthusiasm and excitement sic). The start-up is backed by Toyota and is part of a public/private think tank, in which also Subaru, Boeing, Airbus, ANA, Japan airlines, UBER and NEC are involved
The project aims to develop a roadmap for the commercialisation of flying people transporters. These future vehicles will need to de-congest roads, improve mobility for people living in remote, mountainous areas and isolated islands, and in aid disaster relief.
Tokyo 2020
During the Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese hope to demonstrate their industries’ capabilities in the mobility arena by showing off flying cars, autonomous taxis, connected vehicles and much more. It’s a sign of Japan’s economy finally modernising, under guidance of Prime Minister Abe’s initiatives to ease regulations, change university programs, draw more women into the workforce and slowly opening the doors for foreign labor.
