Toyota has been investigating the possibility of hovering cars

Self-driving cars are cool – but what about hovering cars? Google is working on the former and, according to statements made during a recent technology summit, Toyota is working aggressively on the latter. According to The Verge, a manager in the automaker’s technical administration group, Hiroyoshi Yoshiki, said Toyota is indeed researching ways to make cars fly, though perhaps not the way they did in The Jetsons. Instead, Toyota’s laboratories are studying ways to cut down on the friction between a car in the road, and the technology is more akin to something you’d find with a hovercraft. Yoshiki told The Verge that Toyota’s goal is to create a vehicle that flies “a little bit away” from the ground, instead of zipping far above it like an airplane would. That’s still futuristic enough for my tastes, and it sounds like a step closer to the reality of having actual flying cars.

Toyota today said it’s investigated the possibility of vehicles that are capable of hovering just above the road, technology designed to improve efficiency. In an interview at Bloomberg’s Next Big Thing Summit in San Francisco, Hiroyoshi Yoshiki — the managing officer with Toyota’s technical administration group — said that the company had been studying a similar idea of flying cars at one of its “most advanced” research and development areas, but cautioned that the concept was not like actually flying around in three-dimensional space. Instead, he said, the plan is to get the car “a little bit away” from the road to reduce friction, similar to a hovercraft. Following the interview, Yoshiki declined to elaborate on when the company began investigating the idea, how far along it is, or if it ever plans to bring it to market. Toyota’s Yoshiki was on stage alongside David Friedman, the acting administrator of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to discuss the future of self-driving vehicles. Last month, Google announced a new version of its driverless car project that was markedly more evolved than the one it’s been developing and testing for the past few years. That includes a reference design that fits just two people, and doesn’t have a steering wheel.