Flying Cars A fool and his money...

There is a hoary old adage - that you can fool most of the people most of the time. And that's enough to raise lots of money for screwball ideas. The Pegasus, a VTOL business jet that is nothing more than a computer graphic comes to mind.

- GUY LEITCH

ANOTHER CLASSIC IS THE IDEA of a flying car – or a roadable plane.

People have been hoping for a practical flying car for 100 years. So it’s an easy way to raise money on the bullshit baffles brains principle.

The latest flying car to do this is Alef Aeronautics, a startup backed by Tim Draper, a key SpaceX investor to give it credibility, even if he has only invested a paltry U$ 3 million. Amazingly, Alef claims to have almost 3,000 pre-orders for its $300,000 electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOL)

Alef Aeronautics CEO Jim Dukhovny boasts that since he began taking orders in October 2022, his Model A is “the best-selling aircraft in history, more than Boeing, Airbus, Joby Aviation, and most of the eVTOLs combined.”

Alef began flying car work in 2015 and first flew a prototype in 2019. In October 2022 it unveiled its full-sized sports car model, along with two working full-size technology demonstrator vehicles. Subscale prototypes (i.e. models) were successfully flown by the company in 2016 and a full-size prototype was first flown in 2019.

It’s two-seater Model A has an unimpressive maximum speed of 40 km/h on land, — but flies at a claimed 170 km/h. (I would like to quote speeds in KTAS but will stick to km/h for the flying cars.) The range in the air is a terrible 117 km and the ground range is 322 km, but that’s a long slow drive.

In July 2023 the FAA gave it a Limited Special Airworthiness Certificate, and Alef says it hopes to have the Model A on the road and in the skies by “next year” – i.e. 2025.