Czech ‘GyroDrive’ beats flying cars
BOCHOR, Czech Republic: As global automakers compete to bring the first flying car to market, Czech pilot Pavel Brezina is trying a different tack: instead of creating a car that flies, he has made a “GyroDrive”—a mini helicopter you can drive. The engineer and owner of Nirvana Systems, a company producing motors for small flying machines, insists his vehicle is the first in the world authorized to operate both on roads and in the air.
“This is the only road certified flying vehicle I know about,” Brezina said in a hangar at the Prerov-Bochor airport in the eastern Czech Republic. “Everyone is trying to make a highspeed car that can fly, but this is a different thing,” said the tall, bespectacled 51-year-old, who has 30 years’ experience as a pilot under his belt. His GyroDrive vehicle is based on a gyroplane-a mini-helicopter-that uses a copterstyle rotor to move up and down, and an aero plane-type “pusher propeller” to go forward.
Brezina’s company buys gyroplane kits from a German firm, and then assembles and equips them with a system allowing the pilot-driver to switch between a petrol engine propelling the rotors and an electric engine that drives the wheels. The two-seat GyroDrive has a maximum driving speed of just 40 kph and can take its crew of two on short drives to a petrol station or a hotel. It needs less than 100 meters to take off and reaches a top speed of 180 kph in the air. Its flying range is 600 kilometers.
After landing, the pilot only has to fix the main rotor blades along the axis of the GyroDrive and pull out a built-in license plate to transform it into a road vehicle. Prices start at 1.5 million koruna, but they can reach four million koruna, depending on specifications.
Robust testing
While Brezina is already planning to take his wife-also a pilot-and two children to London aboard GyroDrives, inventors worldwide are frantically working on prototypes of cars that fly. In neighboring Slovakia, the AeroMobil company says it has received dozens of orders from customers for a flying car expected to hit the market in 2020. “We want to build a vehicle that will not only be able to fly and drive but also fulfill each technical and legal requirement,” says AeroMobil CEO Juraj Vaculik, touting “a robust testing program”.
He said that AeroMobil initially plans to produce 500 units of its winged car, which uses a turbo propeller to get off the ground. The AeroMobil is expected to reach a top ground speed of 160 kph and up to 360 kph in the air, with a flying and driving range of some 700 kilometers. In mid-May, Japan’s Toyota also unveiled plans to launch a three-wheel flying car dubbed SkyDrive using retractable wings and drone technology. The vehicle is expected to have a top flight speed of around 100 kph, hovering around 10 meters off the ground. It will have a top land speed around 150 kph.
Silicon Valley flying car startup, Kitty Hawk, reportedly backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, released a video in April of its airborne prototype and announced plans for deliveries of a “personal flying machine” this year. Other firms, including ride-sharing service Uber, also have soaring ambitions for their flying car prototypes.
Not for everyone
Brezina got the license plates for his GyroDrive in March, three years after starting the project. For his first trip, he flew some 230 kilometers west to an airport on the outskirts of Prague, then drove downtown to have a cup of coffee in the Czech capital’s central Wenceslas Square-and got stopped by the police on the way. “Well, if you saw this driving through Prague, wouldn’t you stop it? I would,” chuckles Brezina, adding the police merely checked his papers and did a breathalyzer test. —AFP