If you were fascinated by the flying time-machine cars in the Back to the future franchise or wanted a ride in Ron Weasley’s flying Ford, there’s good news. AirCar, a dual-mode car-aircraft vehicle, completed a historic 35-minute flight between two international airports in Slovakia on June 28. It had a maximum cruising speed of 190km/h.
Developed by Klein Vision, the AirCar Prototype 1 has a 160HP BMW engine and takes a little over two minutes to transform from a car into aircraft. It has retractable wings, folding tail surfaces, and a parachute deployment system.
Its creator, Professor Stefan Klein, said in a release that the car-aircraft can fly about 1,000 km at a height of 8,200 ft and had already clocked up to 40 hours in the air.
“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,” Klein said after exiting the AirCar cockpit in Bratislava.
BBC quoted the company saying that the prototype has taken about two years to develop and cost “less than 2 million euros” in investment.
The company has another model, AirCar Prototype 2, which is in the pre-production stage. It has a 300HP engine and is expected to have a cruise speed of 300km/h. The company has planned to develop a variety of models in the future: three and four-seaters, twin-engine vehicles, and also an amphibious version.
