Flying cars: They’re real and landing soon

Will flying cars take off?

The race to the sky hots up this month with two companies banking on it.

The order books are opening for two flying cars that are on a trajectory to commercialisation in just a couple of years.

US-based Alef Aeronautics will open pre-orders for its Model A flying car, which has been priced at $US299,000 ($A455,000) and is due to roll into driveways by late 2025, while pre-orders for the Xpeng AeroHT will start in the fourth quarter of this year ahead of first deliveries also by the end of next year.

Several global car-makers including Toyota and Hyundai are working on vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles, the latter confirming its aeronautics arm Supernal will leverage the Korean car giant’s manufacturing might to mass-produce flying cars by 2028.

“This isn’t about lofty imaginings any more. Flying cars are here, and they’ll reshape our lives in ways we haven’t yet thought of,” said Dominic Wyatt, spokesperson for the International Driver’s Association.

“The societal implications of mass-produced flying cars are boundless. They could change life as we know it.”

Right now, Alef Aeronautics is taking pre-orders for $US150 (or priority deposits for $US1500) for its VTOL flying car, which looks like a car when in ground mode and uses electric motors – eight of them, hidden beneath its mesh-like body structure – to drive the wheels on the ground and propellers once airborne.

The Model A has room for two occupants within a unique spherical canopy stabilised by a gimballed rotating design. Alef Aero reckons it has a 320km range on the road and a 177km range in the air.

The company revealed a prototype design of the Model A at the Detroit motor show last year and has obtained special airworthiness certification from the US civil aviation regulator (FAA) to begin testing its flying car on public roads and airspace for further research and development.

China-based Xpeng is well-known for making EVs in its domestic market and is pushing into the airborne market with a vengeance, having previously introduced the drone-like Xpeng X2 quad-copter in Europe, a circa-$200,000 vehicle set to launch this year.

But the headline act is the Xpeng AeroHT flying car, which currently doesn’t have a name but has been earmarked for production in 2025.

The flying car conceals its large helicopter-like rotors in the rear half of the vehicle when in ground mode and can extract them to enable VTOL capabilities.

Brian Gu Hongdi, Xpeng president, talked up the flying car and said it would launch with or without regulations in place for city use in China and that pricing would be “similar to buying a luxury performance car”.

Xpeng’s AeroHT sub-brand also has a modular ground-based 6x6 aircraft carrier concept that demonstrates another way for customers to beat traffic snarls and gridlock, by launching a separate drone.

Closer to home and local Aussie firm Pegasus is readying its own flying car commercialisation, courting police forces as potential fleet buyers for its three-wheeled flying car.

It’s not all rainbows and lollipops though. Uber Air was originally set to trial air taxis across three Australian cities – starting in Melbourne – but soon after announcing the trial it hived off its entire Uber Air division to a company called Joby Aviation in late 2020.

Several significant challenges will also need to be addressed, including regulatory approval and how air traffic control will (or won’t) oversee flying cars, driver/pilot licencing (if they’re not autonomous), infrastructure issues and the high price of admission.

Despite all these hurdles, the democratisation of flying cars appears to be a question of when, not if.

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