The sky’s the limit
WE’RE FLYING INTO THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORT WITH THE AIRCAR
IT has been the stuff of dreams for sci-fi fans down the ages, but now that dream is a reality – flying cars have landed… AND taken off.
The flying car in question is called the AirCar, designed and built by a company called KleinVision.
And the landmark moment they are celebrating this week is gaining an airworthiness certificate to European Flight Agency standards after a long process of testing.
The hybrid car/plane can manage around 100mph at an altitude of 8,000ft, and has managed to complete more than 70 hours of flight time, including more than 200 take-offs and landings.
It converts from a flying machine to a car in around two minutes, and is powered by a BMW car engine that runs on the same fuel me and you fill up with at the pump.
What happens next with the revolutionary vehicle is down to the owners of the company that made it – Professor Stefan Klein and the co-founder of the project Anton Zajac. They say next up is a flight between London and Paris, and they hope to soon begin mass production.
Whatever comes next the development is a huge step towards the kind of future imagined in sci-fi books of old.
But incredibly it wasn’t the only future-tech aviation news of the week, and perhaps not even the most significant.
The biggest drawbacks with the AirCar is that it needs a traditional airport to take off and land, it requires a pilot, and it runs on petrol. All things that will most certainly limit its appeal.
That’s perhaps why, in the US, Boeing has invested $450m in a new company it co-founded with one of Google’s creators Larry Page – Wisk Aero makes flying taxis.
Now, these sadly don’t turn into cars, but that’s because they don’t have to – they can take-off and land vertically, run on electricity, and are autonomous – no pilot.
The biggest drawback Wisk has in getting its business off the ground is that it doesn’t have any regulatory approval yet to fly commercially and carry passengers.
As you might imagine, the hoops the company will have to jump through to gain such approval by proving the vehicles are safe will be considerable and time-consuming.
That notwithstanding, with the extra investment, Wisk says it’ll be looking to operate a real business carrying real passengers within the next five years in cities all over the world – 14 million flights-ayear is the target.
The message is clear, then, for at least part of the future of personal medium-distance travel, it’s not a case of watching this space, more looking to the skies.