Look! Up in the sky! It’s a car! It’s a plane. It’s … an AirCar! Yes, it’s an honest to goodness flying car, and it’s been officially granted a certificate of airworthiness by the Slovak Transport Authority after 70 hours of flight testing and more than 200 takeoffs and landings.
The AirCar is the brainchild of physicist Prof. Stefan Klein, founder and CEO of Klein Vision.
“AirCar certification opens the door for mass production of very efficient flying cars. It is official and the final confirmation of our ability to change mid-distance travel forever,” Klein said.
The craft has a 1.6-liter BMW engine and runs on regular gas you’d find at the pump. It takes just over 2 minutes to transform between car and plane modes. In June it reached speeds of more than 100 mph and heights of more than 8,000 feet on a successful 35-minute flight between airports in Nitra and Bratislava, Slovakia.
“Fifty years ago, the car was the epitome of freedom,” co-founder Anton Zajac said. “AirCar expands those frontiers, by taking us into the next dimension; where road meets sky.”
The project took eight specialists more than 100,000 manhours to realize, and this is fifth iteration of the team’s flying car.
Klein Vision has plans to launch a Paris-London service in the near future, the BBC reported. The company has completed testing on a on an ADEPT Airmotive engine for a new model it hopes will have a range of 600 miles and travel at 185 mph.
“Transportation Authority carefully monitored all stages of unique AirCar development from its start in 2017. The transportation safety is our highest priority. It defines a new category of a sports car and a reliable aircraft. Its certification was both a challenging and fascinating task,” said René Molnár, the director of the Transport Authority of Slovakia’s Civil Aviation Division.
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