Suzuki said it had signed an agreement with local startup SkyDrive to jointly produce flying cars from the first half of 2024, taking advantage of the segment’s strong growth potential.

These flying vehicles, which use multiple rotors to take off and land vertically, are expected to increase in popularity in the second half of the 2020s and other automakers such as Hyundai Motor are also making significant efforts to bring them to market. Some flying vehicles are being developed to also travel by land to increase their flexibility.

The vehicles will be assembled at a Suzuki factory in Japan’s Shizuoka prefecture by a new dedicated SkyDrive production subsidiary. At the Paris Air Show earlier this week, SkyDrive announced it had developed a new flying car which can accommodate three people instead of two.

The new model is 13m long and 3m high and has an extended flight range of 15km instead of 10km.

Suzuki and SkyDrive originally announced they were to collaborate in the flying car segment in March 2022.

SkyDrive was established in 2018 by former Toyota engineers and aims to showcase its flying vehicles at the 2025 World Expo in Osaka, Japan.