Aeromobile Flying Car: Slovakian Start Up Closes in on the Future
In 1940 Henry Ford told the world “Mark my words: a combination airplane and motorcar is coming. You may smile, but it will come.” Years earlier, Ford abandoned testing of a single seat aircraft dubbed “The Model-T of the Sky” after it crashed during a distance test, killing the pilot. By 1956 the US Army had issued contracts for a type of “Flying Jeep” with companies like Chrysler delivering actual working prototypes.
The most successful of the prototypes, Piasecki’s VZ-8, was designed to operate a few feet above the ground, but could also hover several thousand feet in the air, and was reported to be a stable flight platform.
The project was scrapped after the US Army determined ‘flying jeeps’ were not suitable for battlefield operations. The ultimate goal of the flying car is to safely take off and land within a cramped urban space, while addressing all the safety and operating concerns that come with operating a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle, concerns such as exposed rotors and engine power and noise.
The world’s first commercial flying car, the Aerocar, debuted in 1949, a standard road car that converted into an airplane. The design wasn’t exactly user friendly as the Aerocar required towing the wings behind the vehicle on a trailer. Conversion between road car and airplane was cumbersome at best.
Still, thanks to the popularization of the concept in the 1960’s by the animated series The Jetsons, designers and engineers have continued to dream of the day when a single vehicle could be used to quickly navigate the airspace between cities, and then successfully traverse the city streets.
Thanks to Aeromobile, those dreams may soon be reality.
The company unveiled a new prototype of road-ready roadster at the 2015 SXWX that quickly and easily converts into a functional aircraft, via its stowed wings that collapse alongside the cockpit, and a rear mounted propeller. The new vehicle intends to make use of existing airport and roadway infrastructure around the world. A working prototype started testing in real-world flight conditions in October of 2104.
Aeromobile expects the vehicle to hit the market in 2017. CEO Juraj Vaculik told CNBC in an interview “The point is not only to showcase that it’s possible to marry together a plane and a car, but to really commercialize it.” The new vehicle is meant to appeal to luxury car owners and flight enthusiasts alike. With a price tag of several hundred thousand dollars, the new hybrid vehicle is comparable to purchasing a new vehicle from Tesla Motors.
The roadster functions much like a regular vehicle or sport airplane, seating two, and running on gasoline. The vehicle has a top speed just shy of 100 mph, and can go nearly 600 miles on a single fill-up. In the air, you will reach a top speed of 124mph and can cruise along for over 400 miles before refueling.
The aircraft only needs 650 feet to take off and just 160 feet to land. In the future, will cars use the grassy medium on most major roadways to launch and land their personal flying cars, and then merge into existing traffic? Only time will tell.
The next step for the company is to secure enough funding to put the idea into mass production, and the next goal is to take you out of the drivers (pilots?) seat, and turn the operation of the vehicle over to computers and GPS. A 4 seat versions of the vehicle might also be included with future designs.
