AirCar could soon go into series production

  • Reading Time:3Minutes

The AirCar received its airworthiness certificate from the Slovak Transport Authority last Wednesday, and the prototype will soon be followed by the production version.

The AirCar first took to the skies in October 2020 and has since spent more than 70 hours in the air during 200 test flights, meeting the European Aviation Safety Agency’s criteria, the BBC reports. According to a press release from Klein Vision, the vehicle “demonstrated amazing static and dynamic stability” in the air, and managed to take off and land without any pilot intervention.

René Molnár, Director of the Civil Aviation Department of the Slovak Transport Authority, said that the authority had been following the development of the car from the very beginning and that it could, in his opinion, create a new category of transport. The official was keen to stress that the Authority’s top priority was transport safety, and that the AirCar met these requirements to the maximum.

The AirCar prototype used for test flights is a custom-built, two-seater powered by a 1.6-litre, 140 hp BMW engine. The 1.1-tonne car needs a runway of around 380 metres to take to the air, where it can reach speeds of up to 180km/h. The AirCar’s longest journey took place in June last year, when it covered the nearly 100 kilometres between Nitra and Bratislava in 35 minutes, but its developers say it can theoretically fly up to 1,000 kilometres on a single refuelling.

Thanks to servo motors, the vehicle can fold its wings and retract its tail in just two and a half minutes, fully automatically, and can be driven on public roads. As is not unusual for smaller aircraft, the AirCar is also fitted with a parachute for safety and, as with conventional aircraft, it can of course only be flown with a valid pilot’s licence.

The company’s founder, Štefan Klein, started working on the design of the flying car in the 1980s, and the first prototype, the AeroMobil, was built in 2013. Klein left the company a few years later and, together with Anton Zajac, founded Klein Vision in 2017, where they took five years and hundreds of thousands of man-hours to go from initial sketches to a flight licence. “50 years ago, the car was the embodiment of freedom. The AirCar pushes those boundaries and takes us to the next dimension; to where the road meets the sky,” said Zajac, who expressed Klein Vision’s ambition for this extraordinary achievement.

The designers’ next goal is to create an advanced version of the car that will use Adept Airmotive’s engine developed for airplanes, so that its top speed in the air can reach 300 km/h. According to Klein Vision, this car could be licensed in about a year, but it is not yet known when mass production of the vehicle could start.

Source: klein-vision.com

Recent article

Additional aircraft News & Articles

Special flying robot goes to the Moon – sent up by China
read more

News & Articles Points of interest

Where is self-driving in modern aircraft ?
read more

Additional aircraft News & Articles

Boom XB-1 flies at supersonic speed for the first time
read more

News & Articles Points of interest

Can AI pilot a flying car better than a human?
read more

EVTOL & VTOL News & Articles

Airbus reassesses electric air taxi development
read more

EVTOL & VTOL News & Articles

Overcoming bottlenecks in eVTOL production
read more

Flying Cars News & Articles

The next era of mobility with Xpeng
read more

EVTOL & VTOL News & Articles

Trends in eVTOL technology
read more

News & Articles Propulsion-Fuel

What is SAF ?
read more

Electric airplane News & Articles

Regulatory and safety challenges for electric aviation
read more
More articles you may be interested in...

Drones News & Articles

DJI Inspire 3: A New Era in Aerial Videography

DJI, a leader in drone technology, has once again outdone itself with the release of the Inspire 3, an impressive upgrade to its nearly seven-year-old predecessor, the Inspire 2. This state-of-the-art drone is capable of capturing stunning 8K video footage while soaring at exhilarating speeds.

Flying Cars News & Articles

Generations dream come true: the luxury flying car

In an era where innovation defines the future, Samson Sky's Switchblade flying sports car emerges as a groundbreaking development, transcending>>> READ MORE

Flying Cars News & Articles

Flying cars? Still far from reality

more

News & Articles Propulsion-Fuel

What are the key manufacturing cost drivers for eVTOLs, and how can they be optimized to make these vehicles economically viable for mass production ?

he dream of electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles (eVTOLs) cruising over cities is tantalizingly close to becoming a reality. Yet, while the vision is promising, the economics of bringing these vehicles to mass production remains a major hurdle. To ensure that eVTOLs are more>>> READ MORE

News & Articles Propulsion-Fuel

In which cities are vertiports built?

Air taxi News & Articles

The Dawn of Autonomous Air Taxis: EHang’s EH216-S Makes History

EHang, a Chinese eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) manufacturer, has made remarkable strides in>>> READ MORE

more

Flying Cars News & Articles

They put wings on a BMW and see if it can fly

Vilebrequin, a French car YouTube channel, took a different approach to creating a flying car. They converted an old BMW 5 with sail wings and then drove it at high speed into a jump.