California startup Alef Aeronautics has released "the first documented, verifiable flight of a flying car (an actual car, with vertical takeoff, non-tethered)," as CEO Jim Dukhovny wrote in a social media post.
The bracketed disclaimers, of course, are there because plenty of flying car designs have made it airborne. The Samson Switchblade and Klein Vision, for example, both needed a runway. The marvellous, transforming Aska A5 has driven on the street and taken off, but not in the same video clip, and its flight tests thus far have been on safety tethers. Chinese company XPeng might have a claim with the two-ton fold-out prototype it flew in 2022, although that video leaves open the possibility that somebody was hiding behind it and pushing, rather than letting it move under its own power.
Whatever the truth of the "world first" claim here, Alef has certainly come further than we'd have expected. And while the quality of the released video isn't what you'd expect from a serious operation, it looks genuine enough to us. Alef's ultralight Model Zero prototype sits stationary on a street, with a driver clearly on board. There's then a cut, and with the window shut the driver is no longer visible as the car rolls a short way forward down a hill.
There's then another cut, which annoyingly skips the takeoff, but then the Model Zero floats gingerly over the top of a parked Lexus and bounces gently to rest on the other side. No audio is included, which is also super annoying. But a short flight test was made, on a piece of closed-off public street. Feast your eyes, provided they haven't worked up much of an appetite - unfortunately there's no feast at all for your ears, presumably because it's extremely noisy:
Alef claims it's had prototypes like this flying for several years now. So why are we only just seeing video? “We’re obsessed with safety, and we wanted to make sure the car is safe enough for consumers before we actually show it,” said Dukhovny.
Another video, below, shows the Model Zero prototype being driven in a similarly ginger fashion along a dirt road in the desert. From certain angles, this thing really does look the part thanks to a sleek exterior from former Bugatti/Jaguar designer Hirash Razaghi, rolling along like some kind of futuristic Porsche with benefits.
In reality, it's best conceived as a multicopter drone on wheels, with a very mild-mannered capacity for slow movement on the ground and a set of faux bodywork covering the propellers and filling out the silhouette of a car.
The production Model A version, however, promises to be one of the most bizarre and mechanically ambitious eVTOL/flying car projects we've ever seen, because it doesn't just roll along on the street, then take off and fly like an enclosed multicopter... It's also got a cruise flight mode, which it engages by keeping its fully gimballed cabin level and rotating it sideways, while rotating its wheels, chassis and bodywork 90 degrees in horizontal flight, such that the side body panels become a pair of boxed-in biplane wings.
Here's what that will allegedly look like in the air – it's something straight out of Star Wars.
The addition of an efficient winged cruise flight mode will extend range considerably (if it works) – Alef claims that it'll fly up to 110 miles (177 km) on a charge. Alternatively, it can drive up to 200 miles (320 km) – but only veeeeery slooooowly. There's no way this thing would pass full highway certification, so Alef is basically building it to be registered like a street-legal electric golf cart, with a limited top speed around 25 mph (40 km/h).
We're certainly fascinated to see the Model A transition to cruise flight, and to learn whether it'll be stable and efficient in horizontal cruise – but that's the hard bit, and given the complexity of the systems involved, we don't expect we'll be seeing it in action any time soon.
Safety-wise, Alef says all the key components in the Model A will have triple to octuple redundancy. Additionally, the vehicle has a ballistic parachute, and obstacle detection and avoidance systems, and thanks to the wings, it might even be able to cruise down for a reasonably gentle crash landing if it loses power.
There's no word on when the Model A is likely to hit the market, but looking further ahead, Alef says it has plans for a four-seat Model Z, with a 400-mile (640 km) driving range and a 200-mile (322 km) aerial range, and autonomous flight capabilities. That's slated for somewhere around 2035.
Alef's journey began over 11 years ago. Draper Associates contributed US$3 million in seed finance in 2017 following the presentation of a prototype to Tim Draper, an early investor in SpaceX and Tesla. This investment has been a big contributing factor in the development of the flying car.
So far, around 3,330 pre-orders have already been placed via its website according to the company. If that’s true, there’s a clear interest from those who are sitting on a pile of cash – considering that the Model A is currently priced at around US$300,000!
It's nice to see some progress here, but the Model Zero prototype isn't breaking much ground mechanically. It's a functional, full-scale drone on powered wheels. Once Alef gets that gimballed-cabin transitioning biplane happening, though, that'll be something special!
Source: Alef
