The Chinese are interested in the flying car: Geely buys Terrafugia

Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, the giant Chinese automotive corporation popularly known as Geely, continues with its policy of acquiring car brands going forward. The latest is Terrafugia, the flying car manufacturer.

Since in 2010 it surprised everyone with the purchase of Ford of Volvo Cars, the Chinese automotive giant Geely has been expanding its brand portfolio with the acquisition, among others, of Lotus, Proton and, now, with the purchase of Terrafugia, the American company that is developing a flying car from scratch.

Founded in 2006 by engineers and students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (United States), Terrafugia is a manufacturer that has sought from the very beginning to develop a flying car that would increase its owners’ travel possibilities. Its latest development in this regard is the project called TF-X, a flying vehicle that evolves the original idea that led to the founding of Terrafugia, a vehicle that did without the combustion engine and instead incorporated two electric motors to drive the directional propellers that allow the TF-X to take off and land vertically. Once in the air, the TF-X could reach speeds above 300 km/h in flight thanks to the more than 300 CV provided by its motors, with enough range to cover up to 800 kilometers.

The project also planned that, during its use on the ground, the TF-X would have advanced onboard technologies that would allow it to be driven fully autonomously.

Barely three years after its founding, in 2009, the first Terrafugia prototypes already made their first flights. Those vehicles had a cabin with room for two passengers and a design similar to a conventional car at the front, with a propeller at the rear and retractable wings on the sides, which allowed the vehicle to switch from car mode to airplane mode in just a few seconds, depending on the desired use.

At the time, an estimated price of 280,000 dollars (about 245,500 euros) was even set for this vehicle, but the car never went on sale to date due to problems of various kinds. In any case, this has not stopped the project from attracting Geely’s interest, which has acquired all of Terrafugia’s assets; the company to which the angel investor Seymon Dukach contributed 5.82 million dollars (about 105 million euros) at the time.

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