Elon Musk has been talking about flying cars for years, Tweeting in 2017 about the Tesla Semi Truck that had the potential to “fly in short hops.” Of course, we’re yet to see a flying car outside of Back to the Future, but it seems with today’s technology, we’re closer than ever.
A California based company called Alef Aeronautics which formed in 2015 is devoted to making the flying cars dream a reality, and with a recent injection of cash from an early Tesla investor, they’ve pledged to not only have the first model built and functioning by 2025, but to be delivering it to customers the same year. The company claims their car will “be able to take off into the air vertically and fly like a helicopter up to 110 miles on a single charge.”
Alef’s website allows customers to pre-order their very own flying car for just $150, or for $1,500, you get to jump to the head of the queue as a ‘priority customer’. The vehicle itself is predicted to cost just shy of $300,000.
Who are Alef Aeronautics?
So, who are the engineers claiming that in a mere 2 years they’ll be delivering flying cars to customers around the globe? Well, the company started out with 4 founders 7 years ago and has since grown quite substantially in size attracting investors such as Tim Draper who was an early investor in Tesla. Draper initially gave the company “a modest investment” to build a prototype and then offered a further $3M to get the thing built.
From 2016 to 2019 Alef worked on R&D and built and successfully flew a full-size prototype of their vehicle. 2019 marked their “first semi-public demo of a real full-size flying car” which “was shown to a group of investors. It consisted of driving, vertical takeoff, and a small forward motion.”
Is the idea of a flying car completely far-fetched?
To be clear, the vehicle currently being built by Alef is designed for predominantly road use and is only intended to fly short distanced or “hop” above obstacles such as congestion.
Alef’s CEO Jim Dukhovny said in a statement, “The Alef Model is a modern solution for both urban and rural transportation needs in the 21st century because it is the fastest and most convenient transport ever created from the point of origin to the final destination. By enabling consumers to choose driving or flying mode, the Alef flying car allows the optimal path depending on road conditions, weather and infrastructure.”
Will the world be full of flying cars by 2025?
Well, no, probably not. Forbes explains a little more about eVTOLs (electric vertical take-off and landing) and why it’s a tricky business. “Most teams have not made true drive/fly flying cars because for e-VTOL, weight is everything. In fact, right now the physics are barely there,” explains the business magazine. “As such, most teams don’t want to put anything in their vehicle that they don’t need to. The wheels and other components used in driving are all dead weight while flying. If you use a liquid fuel power train, you can get the spare power to carry that weight, but in an e-VTOL that capacity is precious.”
So, while the idea of owning a flying car sounds, let’s face it, extremely cool, it looks like we’ll have to wait a little while for our teenage dreams to come true.
And if you do spot something up in the sky in the next few weeks, it’s more likely to be Santa’s sleigh than anything else.
