by Ian McCormick
Staff Writer
The following story was written by a student on the staff of The Jaguar Times as part of Hilliard Bradley High School’s Journalism Production course.
2022 has been filled with a wide abundance of ideas, inventions and discoveries. As a result, the world is changing little by little everyday. One of the most recent inventions that could have a great impact on the future of our day to day life is the world's first flying bike. This bike was invented in Japan by a company called AERWINS Technologies, who just debuted it in the U.S. this year. Starting out at the price of $777,000 the bike has many various functions that allow it to hover a few feet off the ground. It can fly for a maximum of 40 minutes and it can move up to 62 miles per hour. The existence of this new invention leaves people with many questions about the future of vehicular travel and just about the bike in general. With this being said, Bradley has presented their opinions on this futuristic topic.
It has been noticed that the bike may be more of a higher-class item. Mr Armelie starts by explaining “My guess would be, that [the bike] would start off as a luxury, just like electricity used to be a luxury, and now it’s just worked its way as technology has evolved and it’s become more abundant as well as made more usable”. He goes on to explain “ and I think that that’s the trend things typically follow technologically, it starts off as a luxury and then it becomes a mainstream paradigm shift in society”. In other words, he thinks the bike will make its way through society starting off as an item ment for the higher class, and gradually becoming more of something everyone has. And hopefully it eventually does, as many people will want to see the effect it has on the world.
Assuming this product is mass manufactured however, how might traffic laws change? Mr. Armelie continues by saying “I was watching an episode of star wars, and was looking at the traffic patterns, and my brain started to think about what traffic would look like in an air mobile society rather than a ground based transportation” continuing to break it down he describes “different elevations [of traffic] would be north and south, cause now we’re talking about not being stuck on a single plain”. Essentially explaining how there could be up to four different levels of traffic each going their own direction. This would create a faster and more efficient way of transportation, not having to wait for traffic lights or someone going in an opposite direction than you.
Another question many people have on the bike is, “how exactly does it fly?” Unlike Armelie, Alex Schafer (10) moved away from the effect the bike would have on the world and began to explain how the bike itself may function. He started by explaining “maybe it’s electrical powered, maybe it’s solar powered, wind powered etcetera, it could be a whole different number of things.” then concludes by saying “[this means] definitely faster travel for sure, but if they can somehow make this go on long flights, like the same way airplanes can, I think it will definitely mean a lot.” Showing Alex has some hope that this invention can and will eventually be part of everyday travel.
Although Schafer took a much more optimistic look at the bike there still is potential danger to new vehicles, especially flying ones. Logan Calabrese (12) explains “traffic laws would be a lot different because you can’t have traffic lights in the air, so there’d have to be a lot of new things implemented.” He then describes “If [the driver] is flying high and something happens to the flying bike, they’ll be in more danger.” Here, Calabrese is looking at the potential risks and challenges with flying vehicles, that most people don’t outright think of when talking about the future of vehicular travel. It’s explained how there’s an entirely new layer of risk to accidents, and how traffic will be harder to control.
Whichever direction AERWINS technologies decides to take their invention could have a lasting impact on what the future of transportation looks like. there’s a lot of problems and questions that need to be solved before this vehicle goes into public usage. However, no matter the path things go, the bike will have a flying view of the future.