Mere hours after Hyundai’s European boss said his company was making “very significant investments” in what he called “urban air mobility,” a flying car built by a small Slovakian company called Klein Vision landed into Bratislava Airport after a 35-minute flight from the city of Nitra. Yes, friends, what you’re looking at here is a real-life flying car.
The AirCar landed in Bratislava at 6:05am on Monday. Its wings and tail were then retracted—an automated process that takes less than three minutes—before it was driven into the center of town by the company’s founder, Professor Stefan Klein.
The AirCar is powered by a 160hp BMW engine and to date has completed over 40 hours of test flights and 142 successful landings (it needs a runway, this car—no drone-style vertical take-offs here). It can fly at up to 8,200ft and cruise at 190kph. The next prototype will use a 300hp engine and should be able to cruise for over 966km at 299kph.
Think ‘cars’ like this will ever become truly mainstream?
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
