Aeromobil ‘Flying Car’
It is Monday, 9:25 AM, and your are sitting in your car, stuck on the motorway. The long row of the cars in front of you is barely moving, and you are desperate, because you should be at your desk in the office already 30 minutes earlier. The boss will be furious, but there is very little what you can do, apart from biting your fingernails. You are stuck in a traffic jam – again.
The music from your stereo mixes with the quiet hum of your car engine, making you lose yourself in your thoughts: “If I only had a flying car, just like Marty from Back to the Future. I could just lift off and fly over all these goddamn cars!”
Thanks to the enthusiasts from the Slovak company Aeromobil, in not-so-distant future, this dream can become reality. Their Aeromobil (play on words Aeroplane and Automobile) is a combination of the two.
More likely inspired by the flying Citroen DS from the 60s French film Fantomas Unleashed (Fantomas comedy films were a huge hit in the former Czechoslovakia), than by Doc Brown’s DeLorean flying car from Back to the Future, the Aeromobil 2.5 looks very impressive indeed. According to the manufacturer, the Aeromobil “as a automobile fits into a standard parking space, can refill at any petrol station, it is fully roadworthy and as a plane could both take off and land at any airport in the world”.
While in a car mode, the chassis of the Aeromobil looks not unlike a sleek, futuristic sports car, that is when you overlook two distinct vertical stabilisers in the back, collapsible wings which fold along the length of the vehicle, and the rear propeller, which is activated only in a plane mode.
In a plane mode, the Aeromobil looks like an ultra-modern light sport aircraft.
Looking at the technical specifications, the Aeromobil 2.5 is powered by Rotax 912 water-cooled, four-stroke aircraft engine, which can take a regular (91 octane) unleaded petrol. This type of engine, manufactured by Austria’s Rotax Aircraft Engines, is typically used in light and ultralight sport aircraft, as well as in some unmanned aerial vehicles.
Top speed when in a car mode is quoted as 100 mph and top speed while airborne is 125 mph. The Aeromobil can take 2 passengers (even though all so far performed test flights were undertaken with a single pilot) and has a range of 300 miles on the road and 440 miles in a plane mode (so the daily Glasgow – London commute is not out of the question).
After successfully testing the prototype Aeromobil 2.5 which was also presented at various aero-shows, SAE Aerotech in Montreal, Canada amongst others, the team from Bratislava, Slovakia now works on a new model Aeromobil 3.0 which should further advance the concept and iron-out any potential imperfections of the previous models.18/02/2014
We cannot wait, and will keep you up-to-date with any new developments!