Sick of driving everywhere? No? Oh, you don’t mind it? Oh, okay. Well, never mind then. Don’t even worry about this flying car that’s just done a test flight. What’s that? Oh now you’re interested? Thought you might be. Yeah, there’s a flying car prototype out there in the world and it’s completed a thirty five minute test flight.
Thank the nation of Slovakia and the flying car’s creator Prof Stefan Klein for finally giving us the thing so many sci-fi movies have teased us with. They call it the AirCar, which isn’t the most elegant of names. Why not call it, um, Car With Wings? Hmm, naming flying cars is harder than it seems.
The AirCar runs on a regular run-of-the-mill petrol station petrol and is fitted with a BMW engine. It can fly around 1,000km and reaches heights of 2,500 metres, which sounds super high but after about three metres I genuinely can no longer figure out how long a metre is.
The wings of the AirCar fold in and then fold down the side of the vehicle so that when you’re driving it around the streets you’re not knocking cyclists over with the wings. Like traditional planes the AirCar requires a runway to take off but after cruising in the air at about 170km/h and then landing at your destination, the car tucks it’s wings away and then you can drive off the runway onto the streets like you’re not getting about in the Batmobile.
You’ve probably got a lot of questions. Here are some handy answers.
When can I get one? Probably not anytime soon.
Seriously, when can I get one? This prototype took two years to develop and cost over three million Aussie dollars, it’s unlikely to be up for retail sale anytime soon.
Can I have this one? No.
Please? No.
Okay, final question: where is Slovakia? It’s in Europe, between Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic. You can travel there by road, plane, or AirCar.