Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Cars
  3. News

Here’s a flying car that really is a flying car

By
KleinVision Flying Car takes maiden flight (Official Video)

Some will contest that many of the “flying cars” we hear about today are really no such thing, as their design prevents them from being driven on regular roads.

Recommended Videos

An amazing vehicle built by Slovakian research and development company KleinVision, on the other hand, is about as flying-car as you can get, with its rapid transformation from road vehicle into aircraft an impressive demonstration of what can be achieved in this sector of growing interest.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

The AirCar, as it’s called, was recently taken for a test drive/flight at Slovakia’s Piestany Airport, with footage of the outing posted on YouTube (above).

The seemingly smooth conversion from car to plane occurs at the push of a button and only takes three minutes to perform. After that, you can step on the gas and take flight — though you do need about 330 yards of clear road in front of you to get safely off the ground.

Stefan Klein, founder and CEO of KleinVision, has been working on a flying car for several decades, with the two-seat AirCar bringing together the best of his team’s technologies developed over the years.

The current prototype uses a 1.6-liter BMW engine capable of a cruising speed of 125 mph (200 kph). The upcoming version will use an ADEPT light-aircraft engine that will give the AirCar a cruising speed of 186 mph (300 kph).

Commercial services

Companies big and small are currently racing to build compact aircraft in the hope of launching commercial flying-taxi services for short hops across cities, and impressive progress has been made in recent years.

With urban travel in mind, many of the current designs are electric-powered vertical takeoff and landing machines that require a relatively small space for getting off the ground and coming in to land. This means the AirCar’s runway requirement is likely to limit its ambitions to become part of a flying taxi service, though watching it hurtle along Fifth Avenue prior to takeoff would certainly be a draw.

KleinVision told DigitalTrends that the AirCar could go on sale commercially within six months with a starting price of around $600,000.

It’s worth noting that before it can take to the skies, local air regulators will first have to give it the nod. Oh, and if you rather fancy the idea of flying over gridlocked traffic on your way to work, remember — you’ll need a pilot’s license, too.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Tesla software update fixes hood safety issue on 1.8M cars
Tesla's Model 3 refresh, codenamed Highland, features a sleeker front.

Tesla has issued a software update for 1.85 million of its vehicles in the U.S. to fix a safety issue involving the hood.

A notice posted online by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Tuesday explained the problem, saying that after a customer action opens the hood, it's possible that the latch assembly will fail to detect that it's open, thereby preventing a driver notification of the hood’s open state when the vehicle is placed into drive.

Read more
How are cars going to differentiate themselves when performance is a commodity?
Front three-quarters view of a 2023 Kia EV6 GT in a desert setting.

Cars seem to be simultaneously getting more exciting and more boring at the same time. Fifteen years ago, performance was the thing that set high-end cars apart from the rest. Sure, it’s important not to understate things like design and comfort, but ultimately, high-end cars were different because of their performance. But these days, you can get behind the wheel and hit the accelerator on a sub-$40,000 EV, and get to 60 seconds in only a little more than three seconds. That’s a level of power that only the most expensive cars of 15 years ago could approach.

Now, to be clear, driving dynamics are about a lot more than 0-to-60 times, and even I can easily fall into the trap of boiling performance down to that one number. To be fair, a point could be made that it’s an easy metric for most car buyers to understand, and that the nuances of steering dynamics and the feel of a car are largely indiscernible to most people. But the fact remains that the feel of the brakes and suspension, as well as the tuning of the engine or motors, all impact how a car is going to react when you get behind the wheel.

Read more
Here’s how EVs charge as they drive on a stretch of Michigan road
Tech of the Week Electreon

Charging remains one of the biggest hurdles for mass EV adoption. Public charging infrastructure still isn’t extensive enough to merit driver confidence, and even the fastest chargers still require lengthy stops compared to refueling a gasoline car. But the State of Michigan and Israeli startup Electreon hope to prove that EVs can charge as they drive.

As detailed in a recent CleanTechnica explainer, the Michigan Department of Transportation is demonstrating in-road wireless charging hardware from Electreon on a quarter-mile stretch of 14th Street in Detroit. It’s being billed as the first such roadway in the U.S.

Read more