Remember the time when we used to fantasize about flying cars. Well! That fantasy has come to reality with the flying car completing a historic intercity flight. Stefan Klein, the founder and CEO of R&D firm Klein Vision, which built the prototype hybrid car-plane piloted the historic flight.
On June 28, the car flew between two international airports in Nitra and Bratislava in Slovakia. It covered the distance in 35 minutes.
Klein put forth 20 years of effort to create the AirCar prototype. So far, the AirCar has undergone over 140 flights and this week’s intercity flight was the “most ambitious effort”.
The car is equally capable of running on roads and flying in the sky and transforms with the click of a button. The car deploys wings and a tail, remodifying the aerodynamics and takes mere 135 seconds to do so. It is powered by a BMW petrol engine, has a maximum cruising speed of 190 km/h and has flown up to 8,200 feet with its fixed-propeller system.
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Klein plans to increase the peak speed to 300 kilometers per hour and the endurance to 1,000 kilometers on a single tank of fuel.
So far, the car has been able to clock 40 hours of flight. Meanwhile, it has performed steep steep 45 degree turns and stability and maneuverability testing.
“This flight ushers in a new age of dual-transportation vehicles,” Klein said in a statement. “ It creates a new mode of transportation and returns the freedom originally attributed to cars back to the individual.”