Natural disasters bring much pain into our lives, but it can hardly be argued with that they also move us along with the times, sometimes prompting the creation of things we wouldn’t have thought about in the first place otherwise.
A good example of this is the latest creation of Toyota ex-employee Hideo Tsurumaki, an all-electric minicar that can turn into a hovercraft. The idea came to him following a devastating tsunami that hit Japan in 2011.
The engineer founded his Fomm startup in 2012 and assembled the first prototype of the vehicle manually. During the following three years he has been cooperating with the University of Tokyo on a way to make the car steerable in water. As a result, it relies on its turbine-like wheels and water-jet propeller to move forward.
Mr. Tsurumaki has built as many as four different prototypes before concluding a production agreement with a major Japanese car enterprise. The car comes to the mass market late this year with 14 horses under the hood and a driving range of up to 160 kilometers (~100 miles). While on land, it can accelerate to a respectable 80 km/h (~50 mph).
Photo: Motor.ru