Fuijin Kaze

The MatsutomoCorp's Fuijin is the best known kaze craft. At 5.5 meters long and just over two tons in weight, the Fuijin can carry four passengers in executive comfort along with a pilot and a security ops. The single engine can propel the vehicle up to 400 kilometers per hour, though it typically seldom exceeds 80 kph moving from executive ports to ships or aerodromes. The thing that most people recognize about the Fuijin over other kazes is the designs forward canards on the lower fuselage. The canards are listed as being stabilizers for a smoother ride, but in truth they are a stylistic element, making the ovoid pod craft look more sporty, and less like a large egg.

Appearance:

A Kaze is a pod type aerospace craft comparable in function to a civilian helicopter. They typically have a small crew cabin and carry a few people or a small amount of cargo. The craft uses a high density battery system to power a single A-pod, giving it the ability to move without relying on thrust, buoyancy, wing lift, or any other traditional mode of flight. As such, the typical kaze has a short flight range and low endurance, typically less than an hour. As such, the design is almost never used for security or military purposes. The craft is usually flown by an LAI pilot, taking it's commands from a human operator.

In the Neo-Tokyo arcoplex, there are 13,120 registered Fuijins and another 55,500 kazes of varying make and model. The vision of the flying car came true, but only after the widespread retirement of the regular car.

Usage:

The typical user of kaze craft are megacorporations, who use them as short range executive vehicles, like corporate helicopters. They are most commonly used in megacities, where the small craft flit from arcology to arcology, bypassing mass transit systems, or from arco to a waiting airship and back.

CorpPod - the biggest users are corps, who use the craft as transportation for their management and elite personnel.

GovPod - governments make major use of kazes, bypassing traditional mass transit and military transport options. Anything that requires heavy lift typically defaults to military hardware, and low level operations use the same mass transit systems as citizens.

PrivatePod - there are wealthy citizens who make use of kazes. The vehicle is comparable to owning an exotic luxury vehicle or a personal helicopter.

MunicipalPod - local governments make use of Kazes for responding to emergencies, news broadcasting, and for traditional municipal personnel

Purpose:

One of the common images of the old Visions of the Future was the ownership of a personal airplane in every home. While the kaze type aircraft is not owned individually, only by the wealthy, it fits. Roughly the size of a large automobile, it carries four to seven people in relative comfort short distances through the air.

For military applications, the Patrol Pod was designed for actual combat and patrol applications. Law enforcement doesn't make use of Kazes for patrols and work, instead relying on police model patrol pods.