The only thing more upsetting than the alarm going off every morning is dealing with traffic. You have to get up three hours before work just to avoid it. Even then, you wind up stuck in bumper to bumper traffic. It’s annoying. You want to pull your hair out. Don’t you sometimes wish that your car could fly like the DeLorean from “Back to the Future”? Well then, you must be on the same wavelength as Kyxz Mendiola from the Philippines. He got so fed up with traffic jams that he came up with a passenger drone to cut down on travel time every morning.Everyone else’s morning is usually soured by bumper-to-bumper traffic too. Regular roads and freeways are always packed. It’s a common nuisance that doesn’t seem to have any solution. All you can do is bump up the music and hope your A/C doesn’t stop working.
This is your time, your life, and it’s running out like sand in an hourglass. But there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it except chill out. You could find something productive to do while you sit in traffic, like listening to a self-help CD, or learning a new language.
The bureau claims that we spend at least 26 minutes trying to get to work. For those who work 50 weeks out of the whole year, that amount accumulates to a total of nine days spent on the road. That number is probably higher in cities with high traffic like Los Angeles, or New York City.
The Boston Consulting Group conducted a study in 2017, which suggests that drivers in Metropolitan Manila are stuck in traffic 66 minutes a day. That’s several weeks a year that commuters waste on the road.
Unfortunately, the roads weren’t designed to handle the massive increase in traffic. Of course, the government could have the roads expanded, but that might not happen right away. So, some locals are taking a different approach.
His city is one of 16 that have created a network of congestion in Metro Manila. But Mendiola is a genius. In fact, he’s the man responsible for Koncepto Millenya, a collective think tank of inventors and entrepreneurs who want to solve traffic issues using electric vehicle technology.
While it’s still in its early stages, Mendiola’s fascinating invention might alter the future of daily commute forever. But the electric vehicle itself is such a nifty concept, that it also has the potential of being a lot of fun too.
Think of it as a drone vehicle, and it can literally get you out of a jam, and take you to work in half the time. If Mendiola’s invention becomes a hit, you’ll never have to worry about being late for work. Who knows? You might be able to squeeze an extra hour of sleep every morning.
An electronic flight controller was fitted into the vehicle, which is powered by batteries and driven by a propeller. But you don’t have to worry about the drone running out of juice in mid-air. Mendiola claims that he built a battery redundancy system to ensure that the vehicle remains in the air.
Mendiola had originally thought of coming up with a remote-controlled hoverboard. But then, he decided it would be cooler to create a single-seat drone vehicle. Of course, he would have preferred to design a flying sports car, but the materials he used made the vehicle impossible to fly.
He ran into a minor hiccup that delayed the launch. There was a lot of bad weather in the area. So, he and his fellow inventors failed to meet the original launch deadline. But after two months of working out all possible issues, Mendiola’s dream finally took off.
He wanted everyone to fall in love with his concept. So, he uploaded a video of test flight on YouTube, and he was inundated with positive feedback. Mendiola brought the world a lot closer to making flying cars a reality, and people were ecstatic!
There were a couple of people who criticized the whole concept. One person claimed that it was a disaster waiting to happen. Another individual said that it would likely crash not long after it went airborne. Mendiola realized that it might be a while before everyone’s on board with his idea
The vehicle does have some issues that need to be worked out. For example, the batteries only allow the vehicle to remain in the air for 15 minutes tops. But the batteries take over two hours to recharge. The vehicle doesn’t have any wheels either, which would make landing kind of rough.
Only time will tell what the future holds for his invention. It’s possible that his drone vehicle will become the blueprint for flying cars. If that’s true, then you might not need roads to get to where you’re going every morning.
