Engineering news
Driving your car, you go a short distance to a local air strip. Less than five minutes later, your car now has wings and you are flying through the air.
It has been the stuff of dreams and ambitious concepts ever since man first flew, but it has never come to successful or functional fruition. Now, a number of companies believe their models will finally realise the dream of a true flying car.
Aeromobil is one of them, displaying its new 4.0 model at this year's Paris Air Show. The car has fold-out wings and a propeller, and its wheels retract in flight to reduce drag. It has a maximum cruise range of 750km and a top flight speed of 360km/h, and can take off from air strips, fields and airports with runways of at least 600m.
“It is a dream,” says vehicle development engineer Imran Muhammad. “When they first called me, I was so amazed with this project.”
The car is made of a composite material from nose to tail, and uses an internal combustion engine on the road and in the air to get sufficient power. The biggest challenge is resolving differences between the automotive and aerospace industries, says Muhammad. “We have to combine them and that is the biggest challenge. We have to do crash testing as automotive and then other testing as aerospace.”
Appreciative cooing is heard from passers-by every time the team starts the smooth automatic process of unfolding the wings to full 8.8m wingspan. The transition from car to plane takes about three minutes, although users need to manually unfold the propeller. This has the advantage of ensuring pilots have physically walked around the outside of the vehicle and completed a safety checklist before flight, says Muhammad.
Inside the car, features have multiple uses to work on the ground and in the air. The steering wheel controls yoke during flight, and the pedals are used by the driver-pilot in both modes.
The 4.0 model follows Aeromobil’s 3.0, a more plane-like model now known as the Blue Vehicle. “I looked at the Blue Vehicle two-and-a-half years ago and studied it very carefully, and could see it was not impossible,” says the firm's chief technical officer Douglas MacAndrew. “I could not see any reason why the engineering challenge couldn’t be taken on. We can do this, we have the knowledge and the confidence and the information to do it.”
Bratislava, Slovakia-based Aeromobil is already taking orders for the vehicle, which will cost between €1.2-€1.5 million depending on extra features. The company expects to complete its first order in 2020.
The 4.0 model is displayed at the air show’s new Paris Air Lab, a large exhibition space dedicated to research and innovation. Other companies are also displaying innovative new modes of travel, including Airbus, who have a one-seventh model of a concept four-rotor helicopter. The design, which is inspired by quadcopter drones, would be powered by electricity and carry four people.
Our reporter Joseph Flaig is at the Paris Air Show this week. To contact him, email joseph.flaig@caspianmedia.com or follow him on Twitter @Joseph_Flaig.