Industry news

Here’s The Latest “First Successful Flying Car”: The AeroMobil 4.0

Flying cars do not work. We have established firmly over the years that in their current state, they are ridiculous-looking, impossible to park, ludicrously expensive and borderline unusable. That two-tone abomination you see above is called the AeroMobil 4.0, and it’s ridiculous-looking, impossible to park, ludicrously expensive and borderline unusable. Actually, it’s entirely unusable, because it doesn’t really exist.

The AeroMobil is powered by a very boring 2.0L turbocharged four, which produces 300hp. This is enough to move a Honda Civic. It is not enough to move a plane.

Therefore, it’s augmented by an electric motor in the front, because when you’re piloting (no pun intended) a half-plane-half-car thing longer than the Nile down a residential street, what you really want is the alacrity and handling response of a front-wheel drive electric car. It’s basically a Nissan Leaf with wings.

It’s not all silly; the top of the wings contain solar panels to help power the electric motor, and the electric range is a decent 60 miles (cruising range running on the petrol engine is around 740 miles). But if the interior looks anything like this when it comes out, if it ever does, I’ll eat my tires.

Remember when I said most flying cars were “ludicrously expensive” a few paragraphs ago? This one is too. They said in 2015 that it would only cost a few hundred thousand euros, but in the intervening years the price has ballooned to over 1.5 million. They also said it would be ready by this year, so I’ll take most of their statements with a grain of salt.

The AeroMobil 4.0, then. It seems like another bunch of hopeless optimists trying to be Elon Musk. At least they might leave an interesting prototype behind to dig out of a barn in 50 years and sell at Barrett Jackson.

Related Articles

Back to top button