BMW i not working on flying car – yet

BMW has confirmed it is not developing a flying car, despite the momentum gathering in the passenger drone space, but won’t rule it out in the future.

Toyota is believed to be the first automotive company to throw its hat into the personal aerial transport ring, after being caught patenting a flying car design a year ago.

Last week the world’s second-largest car-maker indicated it hopes to reveal a compact flying car -- piloted by a human, potentially an athlete – that will deliver the Olympic torch to launch 2020 Tokyo Olympic games.

Toyota’s flying vehicle project with Cartivator goes beyond just a cool party trick for the Olympics, with the company statement suggesting it could eventually commercialise the technology.

The company has promised to have a prototype flying car, which will be able to fly with a pilot on board, ready to roll in 2019, followed by the final vehicle in 2020.

Toyota’s interest in flying cars will re-focus attention on the emerging technology, which would likely be automated rather than human-piloted, but the biggest hurdle is likely to be the complex air traffic control system required to ensure safety.

That said, cities full of autonomous cars will also require complex vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) communication systems to maintain safety, leading some observers to suggest that flying cars could rapidly supersede self-driving cars as a primary means of mass commuting.

Indeed, a number of other companies are already inviting customers to put deposits down on advanced flying cars, including Dutch company Pal-V, France’s Airbus and AeroMobil from Slovakia.

US company Terrafugia has been also working on its so-called flying car since 2011 (pictured), but these vehicles require an aircraft runway and a pilot’s licence.

Uber has launched its own big-budget flying taxi venture which was labelled a ploy by some quarters to focus attention away from its internal strife and legal battles with Google.

The disruptive ride-sharing company, which is working with Volvo to develop autonomous cars, said in April that it will launch a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) airborne taxi that costs the same as an UberX ride. It’s scheduled to debut at the 2020 World Expo in Dubai.

Dr Alex Kotouc, the global head of product management at BMW i – the German car-maker’s future mobility division – last week told motoring.com that compact aerial transport could be a natural fit for the brand.

“This is the next dimension, the flying car. If there is the technology to make this possible then why shouldn’t BMW do it?” he said.

“The good thing is BMW i stands for visionary mobility and if in 20, 30, 40 years we are capable of building flying cars then I’m pretty sure that BMW will be offering them as well.”

Dr Kotouc said that, for now, no aircraft development is underway at BMW, whose spinning propeller logo signifies its aircraft engine manufacturing heritage, which can be traced back to 1912 – well before it produced its first motorcycles in 1923 and its first cars in 1928.

In fact, the Versailles Armistice Treaty at the end of World War I forced BMW into the automotive industry by banning German aircraft engine manufacturing, which the company resumed in the 1930s when it started producing a range of WWII aircraft engines for the Luftwaffe.

“Honestly we are currently not working on a flying car,” said the BMW i product boss.

“We are still pretty much on the ground, but you know in the beginning BMW started by building engines for aeroplanes, so it would make a lot of sense.”