A flying car has completed an inter-city journey for the first time

Thursday, 1 July 2021

Flying cars are real. Watch the AirCar in action.

We’ve been promised flying cars for decades, but most efforts at such things have been little more than planes with folding wings that drive on the ground. But we might be getting closer, because this one actually looks like a car (well, sort of) and has now actually completed the first-ever inter-city flight between Nitra and Bratislavia in Slovakia.

The aptly named ‘AirCar’ was built by Klein Vision and isn’t just a rendered concept. It completed 141 successful landings prior to it’s journey between Slovakian airports of just under 100km.

'This flight starts a new era of dual transportation vehicles. It opens a new category of transportation and returns the freedom originally attributed to cars back to the individual.' said Professor Stefan Klein after exiting the AirCar cockpit in Bratislava.

This is the AirCar in flight mode. The wings fold up and underneath the rear wing.

AirCar Prototype 1 uses a 120kW BMW-sourced engine paired with a fixed propeller and a ballistic parachute. Under the supervision of the Civil Aviation Authority, the AirCar has completed over 40 hours of test flights, including steep 45 degree turns and stability and manoeuvrability testing.

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Klein Vision eventually wants to build an amphibious version of the AirCar. There’s no word on if this is secretly a production version of James Bond’s Lotus Esprit.

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According to Klein, AirCar Prototype 1 has flown at heights of 2.5km and reached a maximum cruising speed of 190kmh.

Soon, Prototype 2 will up the power to 223kW and add a variable-pitch propeller, which will allow a cruising speed of 300kmh and a flight range of up to 1000km.

Eventually, Klein Vision wants to develop a four-seater version alongside the two-seater, as well as a twin-engine version for long-distance flights and an amphibious version.

And, as cool as the AirCar’s inter-city flight, we’re still a bit away from being able to spontaneously take to the skies to avoid traffic, which is what we all really want from a flying car, after all.