Suzuki Partners With Skydrive To Develop Flying Cars: Initial Focus On India

Speaking about Skydrive, the company specialises in drone tech and has been developing flying cars and cargo drones since 2018. Apart from that, the drones built by Skydrive is already in service at a wide variety of worksites in Japan.

According to sources, the Skydrive drones are more common in mountainous regions of Japan, where the transport of cargo is a bit of a task.

At present, Skydrive is working to build a two-seat electric flying car that is compact in dimension, and the company is also planning for a full-scale production of this flying car.

Skydrive has also set a short term goal of starting an air taxi service during the 2025 World Expo that will be held in Osaka, Japan. In addition to that, Skydrive is also planning to start air taxi services in other major cities in Japan.

Coming back to the partnership between Suzuki and Skydrive, the partnership will develop business and technology with an initial focus on India - which is great for both parties as the Indian market has a lot of potential for a large amount of revenue generation.

Though both companies have announced their partnership regarding flying cars, the collaboration is yet to disclose their targets and investment.

Apart from that, Suzuki recently announced its plans to invest Rs 10,440 crore in India to develop electric vehicles and EV batteries in India. Out of the Rs 10,440 crore investment announced by the company, Suzuki is planning to invest around Rs 3,000 crore to build a new plant to 'increase' production.

In addition to that, Suzuki has also announced that Rs 7,300 crore will be used to manufacture electric batteries for electric vehicles and the electric vehicle manufacturing plant will be set up very close to Maruti Suzuki's existing plant in Gujarat.

Speaking about the Gujarat manufacturing plant, Suzuki has recently added a new production line which has resulted in increased annual production and the current annual production now stands at a very commendable 750,000 units.

Apart from that, Suzuki has already developed an all-new Lithium-Ion battery pack production unit through a joint venture comprising companies such as Denso Corp and Toshiba. These Lithium-ion batteries manufactured under this new partnership is expected to be produced at the Hansalpur facility in Gujarat and the production is said to commence by the end of this year.

Thoughts About Collaboration Between Suzuki & Skydrive

'Flying Cars' does feel like fiction at this point, but we do think that we are far closer to production-ready flying car tech than ever before with technology such as connected car tech and AI. Moreover, the partnership between Suzuki and Skydrive will be beneficial for both companies.