This isn’t the first time we have reported on flying cars and it won’t be the last. Every now and then a story pops up to whet our appetite and put a little bit of fear into our hearts. First we dream about zooming around the skies in our own jetmobile, but then reality hits us with the shock of all those drunk drivers having free reign over our heads.
Anyway, moving on…the investment market is sitting up and taking notice of this part of the car manufacturing sector, not least dating back to a Morgan Stanley report citing a potential $1.5 trillion market in flying vehicles by 2040.
Many industry insiders see Hyundai as the leaders here. Pamela Cohn, Global Chief Operating Officer for the Urban Air Mobility Division at Hyundai Motor Group, commented recently:
“Sustainability is one of the key cornerstones of what we’re doing right now at the UAM division. So, when you look at our aircraft that we’re going to be developing, they are going to be zero-emissions aircraft.
“Whether they are going to be battery-powered, which is what we anticipate our first vehicles looking, with our electric vertical take-off and landing designs or whether, in the future, they may be hydrogen-powered. Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do, and it’s something that we think about as a critical part of our design.”
While Hyundai pushes ahead with the car design it is also looking at the infrastructure. And the market is agog with the idea of other major manufacturers looking at this new development, with Toyota and Porsche being cited.
The bottom line is this: are the dealerships of today, already under great pressure to transform into online retailers, also going to have to – somehow – sell flying cars too? Of course, we’re not speculating that dealers will have to buy up huge tracts of land for the vertical take-off vehicles just yet, but it’s something to put into the business planning mix.