Most Read: Flying Car Rotors Ready for Mass Production; BMW Expands Self-Driving Technology Across Its Factories

Here are the most-read stories on IoT World Today this week.

Flying Car Rotors Ready for Mass Production

Rotor blades for the flying car Pal-V Liberty have been developed in collaboration with the Royal NLR Netherlands Aerospace Center, bringing the flying vehicle closer to mass production.

The new rotor blades are 20% more efficient with less drag compared to equivalent blades, according to the company.

Serial production of the Pav-V is being set up at a small-scale assembly location in the Netherlands, near the company headquarters.

A set of two rotor blades weighs 78 pounds and spans nearly 36 feet.

Find out more about the plan mass production plan

BMW Expands Self-Driving Technology Across Its Factories

BMW has confirmed that more cars are set to drive around its factories autonomously as part of the manufacturing process.

The company initially launched a pilot in 2022 at its huge Dingolfing plant in Bavaria aimed at improving efficiencies by removing the need for drivers at certain points of production.

Now the Automated Driving In-Plant pilot – Automatisiertes Fahren im Werk in German, or AFW for short – has been successfully concluded and received CE (Conformité Européenne) certification for adhering to safety standard, BMW is set to introduce the idea into series production.

Related:Flying Car Rotors Ready for Mass Production

Explaining the move, Milan Nedeljković, a BMW board member responsible for production said: “Automated Driving In-Plant optimizes our production process and delivers significant efficiency gains for our logistics. That is why we will be swiftly rolling out this technology throughout our production network.”

See the self-driving tech in action

Flying Taxi Company Gets $35M More From Brazil Bank

Air taxi company Eve Air Mobility has received $35 million in funding from the Brazil National Development Bank (BNDES). 

The new financing followed a $92.5 million line of credit secured in 2022 and a more recent $50 million investment from Citibank.

The funds are intended to support the electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) development program and for testing processes.

The Brazilian bank was already a supporter of Eve’s vision for advanced air mobility (AAM). 

Discover Eve Air Mobility's plans

Self-Driving Cars Confused by Flashing Emergency Lights, Study Finds

A fascinating new study has revealed how some camera-based automated driving systems can become confused by the flashing lights of emergency vehicles.

The paper, from researchers at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Israel and Japanese tech firm Fujitsu, detailed how the confusion was so great that the tech was no longer able to confidently identify objects on the road.

And they have even come up with a name for the process – EpileptiCar, which they describe as a “digital epileptic seizure phenomenon that causes an object detector’s confidence score to fluctuate when exposed to an activated emergency vehicle flasher.”

As the abstract to the paper stated: “This vulnerability poses a significant risk, because not only does it cause autonomous vehicles to crash near emergency vehicles, but it can also be exploited by adversaries to cause such accidents.”

Find out more about the research

Air Taxi Makes First Test Flight in Japan

An eVTOL (electric takeoff and landing) startup made its first successful flight of its two-ton flying vehicle in Japan,

The flight in Okayama Prefecture was conducted in collaboration with the Japanese non-profit organization MASC. The flight was approved by the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau (JCAB).

Future test flights across multiple Japanese cities are now planned to follow the initial demonstration as Japan works to create the next generation of urban air transportation.

AutoFlight recently delivered its first flying vehicle to Japan. The electric aerial vehicle (EAV) maker delivered its five-seater Prosperity to an advanced air mobility (AAM) operator.

See the air taxi in action