Welcome to the future because a flying car just completed an 80km test flight

Virgin Radio

1 Jul 2021, 15:42

Remember when Doc Brown said, “Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads,” in Back to the Future? Well, flying cars have indeed moved a step closer to becoming reality, following a successful test flight between Bratislava and Nitra in Slovakia. 

Slovak designer and pilot Štefan Klein demonstrated his prototype on Monday (28th June), with the longest flight that his invention has undertaken. 

While in the air, the car travels at about 170 kilometers per hour and consumes 8-10 litres of fuel per 100 kilometers. The aircar is equipped with a BMW engine and uses regular petrol-pump fuel. It can carry two people and can fly at up to 8,200 feet.

After the 35-minute flight, the car’s wings and tail were retracted in under three minutes, allowing Klein to simply drive off into the city centre. Before driving away, he described the experience as “very pleasant” and “normal”, which suggests he has an entirely different definition of “normal” to the rest of us.

Apparently, Klein is already working on a second prototype which he hopes will be twice as fast.

If you are thinking that this would definitely shave a few minutes off your daily commute, or that it would be a handy way to get out of a traffic jam, then prepare for some bad news, because this prototype is not able to take off and land vertically. 

So, unless you happen to have a runway in your back garden, or at the very least an impressively long driveway, then you might just have to stick with your run-of-the-mill, non-flying car for now.