It seems we are always on the cutting edge of what’s hot at History Garage. We were just talking about flying cars the other day, in Here Are 6 Flying Cars That Really Happened, and now the future is finally here.
This is no drone conversion, no helicopter with wheels. It’s a car that flys, like superhero style, and it will be available for pre-order in a matter of months.
The company behind this flying whip, AeroMobil, is a Slovakian engineering firm. We will get a live look at the car before April is out as Aeromobile intends to show the car at the supercar show, Top Marques Monaco.
This is finally it. The future is here!
Previous Flying Cars
The Convair 116 | aviadejavu.ru
The closest thing we have to this in history was the Convair Model 116 and the AVE Mizar. They were both flying cars in the sense of a drivable car that had wings, but both of those systems were clunky.
The wings of those examples did not fold for driving, but with the Ave Mizar, one could have stored them in a hangar. Of course, neither was produced.
They were more like crummy airplanes, with crummy cars hanging from their bellies. The operator would be as unhappy in flight as he was on the ground.
The Terrafugia Transition came out in 2009, but we’ve yet to see a production version of this one despite several prototypes. It seems AeroMobile may have beaten the Terrafugia team to the fold-up wings idea.
AeroMobile
Aeromobile founded in 1990, which means this has been a long time coming.
The first time we saw the Aeromobile design was 2014, only a concept back then. After designing and testing their flying prototype for three years, Aeromobile recently raised $3.2-million to produce them for sale.
“The new investment will enable the company to develop and showcase a physical model,” Juraj Vaculík, AeroMobil’s co-founder, and CEO Juraj Vaculik said in a statement. “It will be very close to the final product that will be used in series production.”
Aeromobile believes their production version will be very much like the latest prototype.
A spokesperson for the company recently said, “AeroMobil aims to make personal transportation vastly more efficient and environmentally friendly by allowing significantly faster door-to-door travel for medium distance trips and in areas with limited or missing road infrastructure.”
They failed to mention what all this efficiency would cost the buyer. Ahem.
The Prototype
To go from plane to car, the wings of the flying car rotate back, something like insect wings. This design keeps them from inhibiting where the car can go, adding no height or weird wind resistance to the ride.
From the concept images, it seems to fit at least two adults. The engine is a hybrid, which makes it a double-hybrid by my math. The car that flies can run gas or electricity.
Depending on who you ask, this qualifies it as a green vehicle, but I suspect the waste from fuel cell manufacturing and disposal isn’t so green. Now, if it were solar and ran on algae, we’d be talking.
What separates Aeromobile’s design from the pack is that it compromises little. It doesn’t only meet compliances for both categories of vehicle, it flies well, and it drives like a champ.
One will need both licenses to operate the new machine, driving, and flying.
Expect only the super wealthy to own these at first. No doubt such a car would have the ability to land on any open stretch of straight road, but what would be the legalities of such a landing?
Probably in the not-legal category. That said, for the doomsday believer, it would offer some kind of comfort to know you could fly away with a short track of the road.
This was the 3.0 concept video:
Source: Live Science,