Last Tuesday, a Japanese company called Sky Drive showed its new flying car, the SD-03. The small car flew for four minutes, staying about 3 to 6 feet off the ground.

The SD-03 is powered by batteries (电池) and has 8 motors (发动机). Since flying cars don’t use runways, they need to be able to take off and land by going straight up or down. What made this test flight special was that a pilot was on board.

People hope flying cars will be useful for short trips like taxi rides in cities in the future. Flying cars could also help reach places that can’t be reached by road.

Of course, there are many challenges about flying cars in the way.

Safety is a big problem. What happens when a motor fails? If flying cars are crossing a city, an accident could hurt not just the people in the car, but people on the ground. That’s why the SD-03 has eight motors — as backups.

Some people believe flying cars will reduce traffic jams, saving lots of time. But new systems will be needed to help control traffic in the air, and this is very difficult for humans.

Finally, flying cars also use a lot of energy — less than helicopters, but more than cars, or even airplanes carrying many people.

By 2050, the world will be urbanized(都市化的). Nearly 70% of the world’s population will live in cities. Many of them will develop into large cities with a population of more than 10 million. Moving people around each large city will be a very big challenge. The traffic speed in London will fall to about 7 miles per hour. Around the same speed it was 150 years ago, in the days of the horse and cart.

But city planners are working on ways to solve the problem.

Self-driving Cars     Robot Taxis	Self-driving cars or robot taxis will play a part. It’s predicted(预测) there’ll already be more than 30 million self-driving cars on the road by 2040. People don’t need to drive by themselves. By 2050, there will be robot taxis in the city streets. We can call the taxis just at a single touch.
Buses	Pubtie transport(交通工具) like buses will be highly personalixed(个性化). People don’t need to look through the bus timetable. Buses will be connected on the Internet and make the way by themselves according to where the people need to go.
Bikes	Bikes will be helpful on that slow last mile of travel, too. Cities could build special roads for them high above city streets. Xiamen in southeast China already has an 8-kilometer bicycle way to protect riders like that. That may be another kind of urban transport in 2050. It will be multi-level(多层次).

For many people, urban transport in 2050 might be cool.

What’s the most interesting way of going to school in big cities? By car or by bike? Recently some photos became popular on the Internet. These photos show that a three-year-old child rides an ox (牛) to school.

In fact, the boy is from Chengdu, Sichuan. He started to go to school in this special way from the winter of 2017. Besides the ox, the boy also rides a donkey (驴) or a pony (小马) to go to school. His father Li Li keeps all these animals. Li Li is interested in Chinese history, and he believes it should be an important part of our daily life. “ When he rides an animal, he is able to talk with it.” Li Li said to Chengdu Business Daily, “It is also a good chance for me to communicate with my son. I will tell him some stories about Chinese history or read poems to him. He also shares his feelings with me.”

However, the boy’s mother was afraid that her son would fall off the animals because she thought the animals might get frightened (受惊的).