SkyDrive is showing off its one-seater electric helicopter taxi at CES 2022

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

Although it has been a weird year for CES and the event seems a little empty, there have still been a few cool, innovative products and announcements. One company, SkyDrive, has taken advantage of the popular event by showing off its new compact taxi helicopter.

Okay so, compact taxi helicopter is a bit of a mouthful. But, that really is what this is. In its press release, SkyDrive calls the all-electric helicopter a “compact flying vehicle.” The Model SD-03, as it has been dubbed, is only four meters tall and a minuscule two meters in height.

Because of its size, the SD-03 is only outfitted with a singular seat. SkyDrive is apparently also working on a 2-seater model, called the SD-05. The SD-05 design just received approval from the Japanese transportation ministry.

SkyDrive told TechRadar that the SD-03 is powerful enough to lift up to 1,000 pounds into the air with a vertical takeoff. The full-electric vehicle is completely emission-free, but it also has a max speed of around 30 MPH and currently only has a max flying time of around 10 minutes.

Although the company is showing off the SD-03 and letting people sit in the cockpit at CES, it doesn’t look like there will be any flight demonstrations.

And it will likely be a long time before SkyDrive’s vehicles become available for commercial use. The company said that it is eying World Expo 2025 in Osaka as the debut event for its air taxis.

“What we want to see in the future is that SkyDrive’s emission-free vehicles take off from and land in your parking lot and helipads atop buildings, making door-to-door air travel a realistic choice of daily urban transportation,” said the company’s COO, Takehiro Sato. It will be interesting to see if SkyDrive’s vision pans out the way it has planned.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• BMW made a car that can change its color at the press of a button
• Autel’s new range of Evo drones is going to give DJI some stiff competition
• Ford wants to crank out 150,000 electric F-150’s per year by 2023
• Airlines have apparently convinced Verizon and AT&T to delay a new 5G rollout…again