Personal Flight

What could be cooler than a jet-powered equivalent of a quadcopter drone? Well, how about a larger passenger-carrying version? That's exactly what aviation firm FusionFlight has just revealed, in the form of its Axion aircraft.

Described as a "formula one racing car for the sky," the Jetson One is an electric-powered VTOL sky toy that can hover, bank, and reach speeds of up to 63 mph. The company's latest video will leave you wanting it more than ever.

California startup Alef Aeronautics's electric car has released the 'first-ever video in history of a car driving and vertically taking off," on a closed-off California road. Alef's incredibly ambitious Model A is on pre-sale for $300,000.

The "world’s first amphibious flying passenger motorcycle," called the Skyrider X1, has just been unveiled at CES in Las Vegas. It rides, it flies – autonomously, no less – and it’ll be pretty darn wild if it does what it says on the tin.

While Australia's Airspeeder is yet to race its sporty eVTOLs with pilots at the controls, Jetson's founder and CTO Tomasz Patan has taken its One flyer to the air for what's been billed as the birth of the world's first eVTOL air racing.

Peter Salzmann has already pushed wingsuiting to a new level via electric propulsion. Now he's back, unplugging the power with a dramatic new foil system designed to push man closer to the gravity-flaunting freedom of bird kind.

Austrian flying vehicle tech company CycloTech is building an eVTOL demonstrator to showcase its CycloRotor-powered propulsion system for electric flight. The firm is hoping to commence test flights in early 2025.

Jetson Founder Tomasz Patan is clearly getting very comfortable with the Jetson One eVTOL's flight control system ... Watch him wrench the controls around to show off how sharply – and safely – this thing can handle tight turns in flight.

A year after it was pronounced airworthy by the FAA, and 14 years after it was first announced, the Samson Sky Switchblade is officially off the ground. This street-legal three-wheeler converts to a 200-mph (320-km/h) airplane at the touch of a button.

Got a pilot's license? That and a fat bank account will let you take off vertically then soar horizontally with Lilium's sleek electric-powered craft, now on sale in the US market. The offering marks the first private availability of eVTOLs.

Monégasque aerial photography and drone show company McClic has successfully test-flown its MC One personal eVTOL, a simple but nice-looking coaxial octacopter with a pilot's seat on top. Anyone can fly it, given about 10 minutes' training.

Kit helicopter manufacturer RotorX has stepped into the personal eVTOL fray with its own take on the manned multicopter. The Dragon promises to zip you around at up to 63 mph (101 km/h), with joystick control, auto-landing, and a ballistic parachute.