Dear Glynn,

Thank you for your e-mail and enlightening thoughts on electric flying cars. Whilst I certainly agree with you that also due to a retarded regulatory environment in South Africa, the likelihood of witnessing ‘flying cars’ in our country is very remote at this stage. However, we are seeing many electric cars as well as charging stations entering the market.

My son who owns a pallet marketing logistics company has recently imported the first ‘electric truck’ into South Africa. He already owns and operates six eight-ton flatbed diesel trucks for his business, but now this new four-ton truck will join his fleet. The surprising issue is that the South African market is relatively open for a decisive change to electric powered vehicles and he will now look at the charging and solar powered ideas for this extensive market.

As you probably already know from what I publish within African Pilot, I am a futurist who and I certainly believe in the many exciting ideas that the aviation world is developing. Some people may comment that it takes an awfully long time to bring many of these projects to market, but I fully support each and every idea, no matter how farfetched the idea may be. The world is undergoing unprecedented change that is happening at an exponential rate, especially as machine learning overtakes human endeavours.

Regards, Athol.