Flying car maker Alef is designing a two-seat vehicle it calls the Model A, shown here in an illustration. Credit: Alef
While dozens of electric air taxi companies work toward regulatory approval to carry multiple passengers, other firms are chipping away at smaller designs intended for a pilot and one passenger.
It’s difficult to assign one name to the expanding array of such smaller designs. Some embrace the term “flying car” as they plan to have their aircraft driving on roads and taking to the skies. When used mostly by one person in the pilot’s seat, such aircraft have been called PAVs, short for personal air vehicles. In terms of operations, all ascribe to the direct aviation model, in which the aircraft travel straight from your home to your destination, rather than from an airport.
To get a better glimpse of how these aircraft are progressing, I spoke with the founders of three companies in the midst of design and testing: Doroni Aerospace in South Florida, Alef Aeronautics in Silicon Valley and Samson Sky in central Oregon.
Though each has a different design and commercialization strategy, they are all emblematic of the coming age of aviation sparked by emerging technology, including electric propulsion. Even so, Samson Sky’s Switchblade “flying car” is gas-powered until “batteries improve,” founder and CEO Sam Bousfield told me. That’s to achieve a flying range up to 800 kilometers, he said. On the road, it will be licensed as a kit aircraft and kit car that will be “autobahn ready,” he says.
“People have wanted flying cars for decades. It’s time,” Bousfield said.
A pilot in 2023 completed a test flight with a full-size Switchblade prototype, but Bousfield said the company wasn’t happy with the maximum speed achieved.
“We were trying to figure out why we weren’t meeting top speed” of the Switchblade, designed to reach 250 kilometers per hour, “and it came down to our ducted-fan design,” Bousfield said. “The fuselage of the aircraft was in front of the ducted fan, creating too much drag. So we went back to the design board.”
The new design has two open propellers attached to a boom that folds — along with the wings — into a trunk space when the Switchblade is in road-mode. The first new prototype is about 25% complete, he added.
Samson says it has raised $13 million from private equity. By selling Switchblade as a kit, the design won’t require a type certificate from FAA. Once purchased, Switchblades will be assembled by purchasers with company help at assembly facilities.
Meanwhile, Doroni’s all electric H1-X will have a shorter range of about 160 kilometers, founder and CEO Doron Merdinger told me. He plans to unveil a full-size mockup in “fall 2025” with the first commercial deliveries anticipated in 2028. The H1-X will have eight rotors in a ducted fan designed for vertical lift, with two pusher propellers for forward thrust.
“The entire idea is take off and you go directly to your destination, and you can land very accurately. And from day one, if you need to do some taxiing to get to a charging station, the wheels will enable you to do that,” Merdinger said.
Doroni reports raising $10 million from 3,700 crowdfunding investors. The company plans to pursue certification under FAA’s new MOSAIC rule as a light-sport aircraft, meaning pilots only need a minimum of 20 hours of flight time. Merdinger said he intends to get such a pilot license himself.
Alef has yet another strategy for its electric Model Zero, which it calls a true flying car. The company is designing the vehicle to meet all requirements as a car while having the capability to fly as an ultralight, which requires no type certificate from FAA.
In futuristic videos released this year, Alef showed the sleek back vehicle driving and lifting off the ground into hover mode.
Founder and CEO Jim Dukhovny told me the company now has 3,500 preorders.
“We are in the middle of fundraising right now. Once that is closed, we hope to get to initial commercial production in one to two years,” Dukhovny said.
Still, experts say a commercially viable flying car or personal air vehicle is likely years away.
“I think flying cars are totally doable, but a market-losing combination,” said Virginia Stouffer, president of Transformational Technologies consulting firm. “Cars work well as cars, and aircraft work well as aircraft.”
Stouffer said that if flying to work were a priority, more people would do so in helicopters today.
Jack Pelton, chairman and CEO of the Wisconsin-based Experimental Aircraft Association, said regulation for such aircraft is the obstacle.
Pelton said electric propulsion technology and safety measures are “all progressing very quickly, faster than most realize.” But a vehicle that flies and drives on public roads is another matter, he added.
“The biggest obstacle is the regulatory environment of multiple agencies to be roadworthy and airworthy,” he said.
