A car with fold-away wings has completed its first flight between airports before driving straight off the runway into the nearest town.
“With Aircar you will arrive at your destination without the hassle of getting a ride to airport and passing through commercial security, you can drive to the golf course, the office or your hotel,” said co-founder Anton Zajac
Powered by a BMW car engine that takes unleaded fuel, the two-seater AirCar goes from ground to sky after a 300m takeoff, reaching speeds up to 190 km/h so far, but with a normal cruising speed of 170km/h.
It has a range of around 1,000km, Klein said, based on flight fuel consumption of 18 litres per hour flying at a height of around 2,500m. It has a fixed-propeller and a ballistic parachute.
With this flight of just over half an hour, the flying car has so far completed 40 hours of test flights, Klein said, having passed flight tests last autumn.
A video of the first intercity flight showed the flying car take off from a grass runway at Nitra and then land on the runway at Bratislava, before parking and initiating the automated process where the wings are folded up, back and locked away under the tail, which retracts to become a large rear spoiler for the car.
“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.” said Professor Klein.
“AirCar is no longer just a proof of concept; flying at 8,200ft at a speed of 100kt, it has turned science fiction into a reality,” said Anton Zajac, a co-founder, investor and pilot.
With the company saying having already had its first buyer, Rajac told the BBC the company hopes to capture a percentage of the huge expected demand for air taxis, where other big players such as Hyundair, Rolls-Royce and General Motors have been unveiling their futuristic products.
"Cars can be heavy, but planes must be light," Klein Vision says, with the two-seat model weights 1,100kg and can carry an additional load of 200kg per flight.
The engine is a BMW 1.6-litre car engine, giving the plane an effective power output of 140 horsepower (HP).
A planned pre-production model, AirCar Prototype 2, will be equipped with a 300HP engine and receive the EASA CS-23 aircraft certification with an M1 road permit.
With a variable pitch propeller, the second prototype is expected to have a cruise speed of 300km/h and similar range of 1000km.
Zajac added: “With Aircar you will arrive at your destination without the hassle of getting a ride to airport and passing through commercial security, you can drive your AirCar to the golf course, the office, the mall or your hotel and park it in a normal parking space.”
Picture Courtesy - Klein-Vision.
