Last week, AirCar successfully passed a flight test in Slovakia. The test was conducted between the country’s national airports in Nitra and Bratislava, and the entire experience was described as ‘’normal.’’
This hybrid car/aircraft takes 2.15 seconds to switch into aircraft mode. It runs on regular petrol and it is equipped with a BMW engine. AirCar’s creator, Stefan Klein, claims the car could fly around 600 miles at an 8,200 ft height.
AirCar is designed to carry two people, and it can fly at a speed of 170 km/h. However, the take-off is not vertical as one would expect, i. e. it is not similar to what you may see in drones. To start flying, the vehicle needs to have a runway.
Stefan Klein’s entrepreneurial venture, Klein Vision, which is working on this project, issued a statement claiming that building this prototype took two years and close to $2 million. In the future, they hope to attract some segments of taxi and airline sales and shape the flying car market that has a potential value of $1.5 trillion, as predicted by Morgan Stanley.
Optimizing AirCar and starting mass production could be a start of answering the demand for solving congestions and the strain existing land infrastructures are experiencing. The expectations for this rising market are high, especially considering that flying cars have always been a metaphor for the tech future in our society.
