Habemus flying car! The AirCar with a BMW engine is already soaring through the skies

Whenever we have thought about the future of mobility, we have imagined flying cars. Perhaps famous films such as Back to the Future, with the Doc’s DeLorean and Marty McFly, have had something to do with it. But today we can say that this idea that crossed our minds has come true.

Klein Vision has successfully completed the tests with its AirCar, a car-plane prototype designed by Stefan Klein that flew for more than half an hour between Nitra and Bratislava and returned to the city on foot, as if we were talking about a conventional city car.

With this feat, the AirCar has become the first car capable of completing an intercity flight. A flight of more than 80 kilometres at an altitude of around 8,200 feet (2,500 metres) and at speeds of up to 190 kilometres per hour at various points along the journey.

From road to sky in 3 minutes

This AirCar Prototype 1 has completed more than 40 hours of flight during its development and more than 140 landings and take-offs. One of the most surprising things about this car-plane is that it can, in a brief 3 minutes, convert from airplane to car or vice versa. It goes from looking like a futuristic airplane with large wings and a propeller to an aerodynamic supercar with a huge rear spoiler.

This Prototype 1 has inside a petrol engine of BMW that produces around 160 CV, transmitted to a fixed propeller, which allows it, in addition to the feats already mentioned, to perform tight turns of up to 45 degrees.

Just in case things get complicated, the AirCar has a ballistic parachute to bring this 1,100 kg vehicle to a halt in an emergency.

A goal with improvements in mind

Klein Vision’s idea is to take this Prototype 1 a step further and bring it to a second level, which will be called Prototype 2. An AirCar certified both as a car and as a small airplane, but with an engine that will produce up to 300 CV, 110 CV more than the current version of the Prototype 1, in order to reach a cruising speed of up to 300 km/h and have a range of around 1,000 kilometres.