If years ago they had told us that one of the sensations of the Barcelona Motor Show 2019 would be a flying car, we would not have believed it. It is true that flying vehicles have always been one of the most repeated images throughout history to refer to the future. However, we had never considered that the moment of seeing a car take off could really come. Well, it turns out that the future that we had imagined so much is closer than it seems, something that has already been demonstrated in the past Automobile with the presence of the Dutch Pal-V Liberty Pioner, a flying car with capacity for two people and one maximum luggage load of 20 kg. The vehicle weighs 664 kg and the maximum takeoff weight is 910 kg. It is equipped with a 100 hp engine and uses Euro 95 and Euro 98 gasoline, with an average consumption of 7.61 liters. A second engine is what makes the flight possible, with a power of 200 HP, the maximum altitude that can reach 3,500 meters, with a range of 300 km.
Private and electric
Larry Page , the co-founder of the Google company, has also been mulling over the idea of being able to pilot your own flying car for some time. Already in 2010, he created a company called Zee.Aero, in which he has already invested more than 100 million dollars. After years of hard work, the result is Flyer, a personal, recreational and electric airplane. To do this, Page has had the help of engineers from NASA, Boeing and SpaceX. As if that were not enough, the businessman has also invested in a flying car startup called Kitty Hawk, much smaller than Zee.Aero, whose president is Sebastian Thrun, head of the team that developed Google’s autonomous car.
For its part, the Slovak brand AeroMobil expects to deliver flying cars next year 2020. The vehicle is six meters long and, with its wings fully extended, nine meters wide. It is a seemingly conventional four-wheel car capable of unfolding wings to transform into an airplane capable of flying with two passengers at a speed of 260 km / h, for a maximum of 750 km. Its price could be around one and a half million euros.
A very near future
2020 is expected to become a significant year for the advancement of flying cars , which in no time will arrive in big cities ready to dominate the skies. In addition, not only the transport of people will enter this field, but also that of goods, with delivery companies and other companies joining the business. In fact, it is most likely that instead of the user being able to buy and pilot a flying car, the industry is moving towards the era of flying taxis as autonomous drones that will transport people from one place to another. In fact, Uber has already announced a series of vertical take-off vehicle manufacturing partnerships called Uber Elevate. Oddly enough, there is not so much left for the Uber you just ordered to fly.
