The first flying car, 'Model A,' approved by the FAA and it's 100% electric
Alef Aeronautics' 'Model A' has a driving range of 200 miles and a flight range of 110 miles. The company plans to start delivering cars by late 2025.
You know what it also is? A purely theoretical 3D rendered vehicle that doesn't exist.
The company, founded in 2015 by Dukhovny, Konstantin Kisly, Pavel Markin, Oleg Petrov in Palo Alto, California, has been test driving and flying the car's prototype since 2019.
"The constraints were: it has to be a real car (driving in driving lanes, parking in parking spaces), it has to have a vertical takeoff (otherwise it is not a real flying car), it has to be affordable for most people (not just the rich)," Alef said.
The following year, the first sub-scale prototype was built, and in 2018, the first full-size “skeleton” took to the skies.
It's for real this time. Whether or not it will be a Tesla lemon, time will tell. But the FAA is generally EXTREMELY safety-conscious.
I remember a video we watched in an engineering class back in the early 2000s about a guy who was making "flying cars" that were tested and "flyable".
They still don't have a practical prototype.
There's a suspicious lack of real photos and video of this soon-to-be-ready vehicle that's set to ship to consumers in just 2½ years. Surely they're not still in the very early R&D phase, right?
The best actual photos I can find is of an oversized drone with a basic frame the size of a car, a "cockpit" in the middle that will barely fit 1 person, 8 propellers where the entire "car" would normally be in a car, and some light-weight foam side panels slapped on. No car engine or car wheels (except some small castors to roll it around).
Along with the (paraphrasing) "it's supposed to be a slow-moving vehicle while on the ground" comment in the article, I guess they're building a big drone with a small lawn mower motor to move you around on the ground.
What could possibly go wrong? (everything)
There are strict rules about flying. If it is an airplane then you need pilots license, which involves a lot of training. I'm comfortable with someone who has a pilots license having one, but it isn't easy to get a pilots license and you need to follow strict rules of where you can fly. Large parts of most cities have complex rules on where you are allowed to fly, so most trips will not be practical in the city as you can't get close to where you want to go.
Either that or it is an ultralight, which doesn't need a pilots license, but has strict rules on where you can fly (no cities, or something like that), and even stricter max power rules, also pilot only no passengers.
Either way, it is only practical if you are a farmer, fly to inspect your fields, then fly to the nearest 'big' city for shopping. (Big city may be 30k people). The slow ground speed and limited flying area makes it a toy for most people, not 'practical transport .
The above assumes that it actually goes on sale, that is not a scam.
If it works then I can see it being used how you say. I'm ... skeptical (at best) that it will work though.
Maybe lazy rich people will want one so they don't have to get off the plane or out of the car when traveling. Between a state or two.
It looks like it's a giant quadcopter with wheels and a car shaped shell. It's hard to believe it has the lift to lift multiple people anyways...
I'm betting on ultralight. And toy for rich people, not for practical use.
Will you also need a pilots license to purchase? I wonder where you would even be allowed to transition from driving to flying...
If you drive too far forward in a parking space and grind on the parking block, or someone dings your door, do you need an A&P to repair it?
Driving down the highway, hit a traffic jam. Don't even slow down just go airborne over the jam.
Aside from the $300k price tag, sadly….
The car will be a Low Speed Vehicle, meaning it won’t go faster than about 25 miles per hour on a paved surface. If a driver needs a faster route, they will be able to use the vehicle's flight capabilities, according to Alef.
What about insurance flying low over populated regions? Air traffic control? I don't think the physical flying capability is the problem with flying cars
It'll probably use VFR rules, like a helicopter. I'm thinking the target is rich guys who eventually get pilot licenses.
yes. flying cars have existed already. basically they're treated like planes.
"Approved by the FAA" is overstaying things a bit. The only thing they were approved for was testing; there's a lot of road (pun intended) between that and certification.
I bet these will sell like NFTs, and be just as useful.
It's also the first flying car (fully electric!) to kill 15 people when it crashes into a duplex.
Yeah, no way that thing is real.
BREAKING NEWS! Flying car piloted by CEO Jetson Bankroll and 5 others crash into the Empire State Building! Over 2000 people reported dead or injured, passengers still missing and efforts to find them in the rubble are underway.
I don’t even trust people in the current two dimensions they drive in, why in the fuck would I want them in a third dimension. Seems like a bad idea.
People can’t navigate safely in two dimensions, and y’all want to add a third?
People can barely drive in 2D, let alone manage 3D travel
I'll just leave this here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fcWOivJ6bs
According to the article, it’s available for preorder. Hmmm.
If I worked for that company, I’d be strongly tempted to “borrow” that preorder list. After all, it’s basically a directory of rich people who also happen to be imbeciles. I have zero experience in running scams, but considering how easy the targets are, I think I’d be successful anyway.
Drunk drivers in these are likely to cause another 9/11 out of incompetence
I thought we were done beating the dead horse of flying cars.
Every 3-4 years, for at least the last 25 years, the WSJ has run a story like this where someone has finally solved all the problems of flying cars. Lots of people throw money at them; nothing ever happens. If you give two seconds of thought to the horror that would result with thousands of people rising into the air every morning to make their commute, you'd realize how absurd this notion is.
With how regulated small drones are I imagine a flying car would be a nightmare to regulate. Also if you thought car crashes were a problem now wait till one crashes into the ceiling of a house or gets shot down over a military base.
Hey guys... Did your article only have renderings and no actual footage of thule "flying car"?
Also ending your article begging for speculative pre-order deposits and a promised production date within 2 years with "backed by a tesla investor" isn't the trust builder that you think it is...
Am I the only one saying "FINALLY!!!" about those premium tier pre-order deposit for extra special double secret important people? We can lose money SO much faster now!!!
Why does it have a SpaceX logo on it? This is not associated with SpaceX in any way?