Aircraft

Astonishing eVTOL flying car design uses side panels as biplane wings

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The Model A looks like a sporty little convertible – but most people would never guess just how convertible this remarkable design is
Alef Aeronautics
The Model A looks like a sporty little convertible – but most people would never guess just how convertible this remarkable design is
Alef Aeronautics
With a legally-restricted top street speed no higher than 25mph, don't expect to make many friends out on lonely country roads
Alef Aeronautics
Looking at the model A from above reveals its nature as an electric VTOL aircraft, and hints at the remarkable swivelling capability of the cabin
Alef Aeronautics
According to this highly informative image, the vehicle will have seats
Alef Aeronautics
The tilting cabin and biplane airfoil designs make it necessary to open two doors per side to get in
Alef Aeronautics
In flight mode, the cabin turns to face sideways, then stays gimbal-stabilized as the aircraft tilts further and further forward, until its side body panels become airfoils and you end up with a unique eVTOL biplane airframe with panoramic views during efficient cruise flight
Alef Aeronautics
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California startup Alef Aeronautics has shown off a remarkably fresh take on the street-legal eVTOL flying car in its 2025 Model A. This wild design debuts a 2-axis tilting cabin, and a horizontal cruise flight mode unlike anything we've seen before.

Running entirely on batteries, the Model A uses four hub motors to get around on the street, in a hyper-minimalist frame that looks almost insubstantial from above. In the middle is a round, glassed-over one- or two-seat cabin that's completely isolated from the external bodywork. Indeed, if you want to hop inside, you need to open separate doors in the bodywork and the cabin itself.

The upward-facing parts of the bodywork are made as a lightweight 3D mesh, and if you guessed there are lift rotors beneath for VTOL purposes, you'd be right. As a drone-style airframe, the Model A runs an octacopter setup, with eight propellers, each with maybe a two-foot (61 cm) diameter, and the mesh skin allows air to flow smoothly through the car.

Looking at the model A from above reveals its nature as an electric VTOL aircraft, and hints at the remarkable swivelling capability of the cabin
Alef Aeronautics

This is about as far as many designers would take the idea, and they'd end up with an acceptable enough multicopter-style flight platform as a result, which would be severely limited in range by its weight and the stiflingly low energy density of today's batteries. But Alef has designed this thing to be much more interesting. Once you're airborne, the cabin rotates 90 degrees to the side, so you're facing sideways. Then, as you go to move forward, the cabin is gimballed to remain level as the airframe tilts around you.

As your airspeed increases, so does the tilt of the airframe, and at a certain point, the side panels of what was once the car become airfoils in their own right. Thus, pilot and passenger find themselves looking at unobstructed panoramic views from a bubble cockpit sandwiched vertically between two wings in a biplane formation. Frankly, it starts looking like something you'd see in Star Wars.

This remarkable repurposing of the bodywork as a set of wings delivers enough lift to make the Model A fly efficiently in cruise mode, and while the design remains limited to how much battery can be carried in that gimballed cabin, Alef says the Model A should be capable of 200 miles (322 km) of driving, or 110 miles (177 km) in the air – a very generous range for a vehicle of this nature.

In flight mode, the cabin turns to face sideways, then stays gimbal-stabilized as the aircraft tilts further and further forward, until its side body panels become airfoils and you end up with a unique eVTOL biplane airframe with panoramic views during efficient cruise flight
Alef Aeronautics

Alef claims it's been flying full-sized prototypes since 2019 and has demonstrated this machine driving and flying at full scale for its investors – although according to CNET, it's yet to attempt the full transition to horizontal cruise flight with a pilot on board.

One of many difficulties involved in building a flying car is working out how to meet automotive crash safety standards with a chassis that's light enough to lift off. That challenge goes double for eVTOL designs that need to lift their entire weight skyward without the benefit of wing lift. Many folk simply go for a three-wheeler platform, since it can be registered as a motorcycle instead, removing most of the red tape.

Not Alef; this thing has to be a four-wheeler in order to remain symmetrical in cruise flight. But there's not a snowball's chance in hell that this ultra-lightweight chassis will pass street-legal homologation as a car. So Alef has taken the unusual step of designating the Model A a "low speed vehicle," which will be treated more or less the same as a street-legal modified golf cart. It'll need a bare minimum of street gear: headlights, taillights, indicators, mirrors, windshield wipers, a horn, that sort of thing. There'll be a weight limit, which shouldn't be a problem.

With a legally-restricted top street speed no higher than 25mph, don't expect to make many friends out on lonely country roads
Alef Aeronautics

It'll also be limited to somewhere between 20 and 25 miles per hour (32-40 km/h) on the street. So despite the rather sporty look that ex-Bugatti/Jaguar designer Hirash Razaghi has created for this machine, it'll be as slow as a wet week. Still, Alef doesn't expect you'll want to drive it much anyway; the road gear is solely for last-mile stuff and the company expects you'll do most of your miles in the air.

Of course, to do this, you'll have to go to designated areas for takeoff and landing, so initially, you'll more or less have to mosey your way over to an airport or a street-accessible helipad. Alef says it believes in the longer term that the laws will change and you'll be able to lift off and touch down pretty much anywhere except restricted zones. In this, and other regards, the company appears extremely optimistic.

Alef is opening up pre-orders on the Model A, at a price of US$300,000, with deliveries slated to begin in Q4 2025. It says you'll probably be able to fly one with a Part 107 drone license, which only requires a written test, but it's not ruling out the possibility that you'll need a pilot's license of some sort.

The tilting cabin and biplane airfoil designs make it necessary to open two doors per side to get in
Alef Aeronautics

But the company says it's focused on making this thing much more accessible down the line, with a long-term plan to make a 4-6 person "Model Z" version by 2035, capable of 300 miles (483 km) on the street and 220 miles (354 km) in the air, or more than double that with a hydrogen powertrain.

With a few million dollars behind it, thanks largely to venture capitalist Tim Draper, the company is striking out to realise its vision and get these things into the air. Now look, the harsh reality of the situation is that building cars and planes separately is hard. Building multi-mode vehicles like street-legal flying cars is exceptionally hard, and building electric VTOL flying cars adds another brutal layer of difficulty. Building them to sell makes things even harder, and producing them in mass quantities is probably the hardest of all.

So whatever progress Alef has made in stealth mode, it's got a huge mountain to climb from here, and one littered with the corpses of rivals. But whatever the fate of the Model A, we've got a huge appreciation for a novel idea, and Alef's design is so different and clever (if complex and potentially bulky) that we'd love to see it get a chance to prove its mettle.

Source: Alef Aeronautics

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12 comments
Steven Clarkson
Ok now heres something unique that we dont often see in the evtol world, my first impression was a revamped cityhawk.

But i see they seemed to have added some innovation here.

I am not sure i buy the "sidepanels" idea as a wing fully.

But if it does actually produce lift then who am into.say anything ton
the contrary.

If anything this looks promising and they should certainly develop this into a commercial product.
martinwinlow
Well, if its flying ability is as impressive as the imagination of the mind/s behind the idea then I’m sure it’ll do really well!
EH
Very creative, but I foresee some issues.
pbethel
Biplanes of old with wire wing bracing had horrible drag from the wires.
How much worse this must be is hard to fathom.
Rick O
Okay, this is the most impressive "flying car" I've seen in a while. The fact that they've stayed under the radar (pun intended) this long is crazy. I think a 45mph land limit would be a little nicer, and still relatively safe. I really like it. I'll be happy if I ever get to even see one, let alone drive it.
clay
It certainly has a fetching Carpomorphic design :-) (that should be a word)
vince
Ok this is so cool. It's sort of like a bird which can fold up its wings into its body and still get around just fine on it's feet.
William Walker
Interesting design, but it won't have much range. The body mesh won't allow the prop motors to breath well and will create too much drag, and will generate significant noise and vibration. The rotating cockpit mechanism will be heavy and adds unreliability. The effective part of the wings are too small to lift the vehicle and will require constant upward thrust from the motors. The body mesh also significantly reduces the airflow over the wing.
Aermaco
This Alef is efficient having a maximum thrust mass area with its wing surround "duct" as props induce more non-prop face area air mass for more reaction mass lift force.

The only weak concept issue is needing a gimbaling passenger cab. So I would think a 3:1 airfoil body with the floor as the trailing edge allowing more interior length could act as a lifting body in a horizontal cruise for less drag & more lift. Then you only gimbal the seats that easily rotate swivel recline etc for less cost & more lift. The body would sit higher with a tapered floor trailing edge but no matter because it is a lousy rarely used car getting top-heavy but would be eye level with truck drivers.
christopher
How could you resist hitting the "gimbal" button in drive mode at traffic lights though...