Flying car makes first inter-city test-flight
It's being hailed as a “new era” of transport
A flying car has flown between two cities for the first time, leading its developers to talk of a “new era” of transport.
The AirCar by Slovakia-based company Klein Vision completed a 35-minute journey from Nitra to Bratislava in the country at around 6am on Monday morning.
The car's wings fold away in less than three minutes and uses a propeller at its rear.
It runs on fuel from a regular petrol station and is fitted with a 160bhp BMW engine, it has flown at 8,200ft with a cruising speed of 118mph and has now completed more than 40 hours of test flights.
Its creators say the AirCar’s new, pre-production model will be capable of cruising speeds of 186mph and of flying distances of just over 600 miles.
AirCar inventor Professor Stefan Klein said: “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.”
Hyundai boss says we'll have flying cars by the end of the decade
Michael Cole, the president and chief executive of South Korean car maker Hyundai’s European operations, said on Tuesday that flying cars will be deployed in cities by the end of the decade.
Speaking at a conference organised by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, Mr Cole said: “There’s some time before we can really get this off the ground.
“But we think that by the latter part of this decade certainly, urban air mobility will offer great opportunity to free up congestion in cities, to help with emissions, whether that’s intra-city mobility in the air or whether it’s even between cities.
“If you’d asked me a few years ago were flying cars something that I would see in my lifetime, I wouldn’t have believed it.
“But it’s part of our future solution of offering innovative, smart mobility solutions.”