Toyota may end up providing the answer to the age-old question “What would Aladdin drive?”, as the Japanese automaker says it has been researching hovering cars. The news comes from Toyota’s R&D chief Hiroyoshi Yoshiki, who was speaking at Bloomberg’s Next Big Thing conference in Sausalito, California.
Yoshiki was asked somewhat jokingly about when we’ll ever see flying cars. His somewhat surprising answer—you can watch the full wide-ranging interview below—was delivered with a smile: “We have been studying the flying car in our most advanced R&D area.” But it’s worth noting that in this case, flying means hovering “just a little bit away from the road so that it doesn’t have any kind of friction or resistance from the road,” not vaulting up into the air like a Cessna when traffic jams up on the 405 freeway. Yoshiki gave no more information about the research program, and a Toyota spokesperson told us that there are no prototypes floating around (literally) Toyota’s headquarters. Yet.
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We can think of numerous inherent problems with the idea of hovering cars, including crosswind stability, cornering ability, and delayed brake response, to name just three, and road feel could be a thing of the past. Perhaps most critical, though: Would we still be able to do burnouts?
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