With a modern, sporty look, and designed to drive on the street and also fly overhead to avoid traffic, the Alef vehicle is advertised as the “world’s first real flying car”.
We’re no strangers to VTOLs (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft these days and we call a lot of these flying machines flying cars or air taxis. The world is full of companies working on developing them and putting them in the sky as soon as possible, with Joby Aviation, Volocopter, Archer, Wisk Aero, and Jetson being just a few examples. But the problem with all of them is that, despite their name, none of them look like cars, but rather airplanes or helicopters.
The Alef flying car on the other hand, for now simply referred to as the Model A, was designed by Hirash Razaghi. He used to work as an exterior and interior designer for car brands such as Bugatti and Jaguar, which explains the vehicle’s sporty car look and feel. Unlike your typical VTOL, the Alef flying car doesn’t have its propellers (eight in number) exposed, for added safety, to save space, and to make the vehicle less noisy.
Alef’s Model A features a gimbaled, rotating cabin design, a distributed electric propulsion system, elevon stabilization system, comes with obstacle detection and avoidance, glide landing, and a full-vehicle ballistic parachute, to name just a few of its safety features.
Although the car is designed as a road-legal passenger vehicle that can fit within the existing infrastructure, it is conceived as an LSV (low-speed vehicle) with speed and other limitations in most states. However, when drivers need to go faster, they simply take off vertically and switch to flight mode.
The Model A will is a personal vehicle designed for one or two people, but the company says it also has a Model Z in the works, a “four-person sedan” scheduled for production in 2035. And while the Model A claims to offer a driving range of 200 miles (321 km) and a flight range of 110 miles (177 km), the Model Z will boost those capabilities to 400 miles (643 km) in driving mode and 200 miles (321 km) in flight mode.
Alef Aeronautics is based in California and was founded in 2015. In 2019, the company managed to test a full-size prototype of its flying car, and now, it introduced it to the whole world. The model is now available to pre-order for a deposit of $150 (regular queue) or $1,500 (priority queue). Alef’s personal vehicle of the future is priced at $300,000, with the first deliveries being scheduled to begin in Q4 of 2025.
You can watch the unveiling event of the Alef flying car below.
Cristina’s always found writing more comfortable to do than speaking, which is why she chose print over broadcast media in college. When she’s not typing, she also loves riding non-motorized two-wheelers, going on hikes with her dog, and rocking her electric guitars. Full profile
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