For a few years now, strange machines have been tested all over Europe, but also in the United States and Singapore. The flying car is no longer a utopia but soon a reality.
Getting around a big bottled city by air, at the cost of a taxi. This is the promise of “flying cars”. If in the 1950s, science fiction films no longer saw us move around other than in these strange machines, in 2022, flying cars are no longer a utopia. Experiments are multiplying to find the best business model.
A car with wings
For several years now, several companies around the world have been working on these “flying cars”, a concept that covers very different machines both technically and stylistically. Several vehicles are indeed similar to very large drones that can transport humans, others are reminiscent of a car with wings. This is the case of the Aircar. This car looks like the flying cars we saw in the movie The fifth Element.
It was created by the Slovak company Klein Vision and has already flown more than 70 hours in test flights as well as 200 take-offs and landings. In January 2022, the Aircar even obtained a certificate of airworthiness awarded by the Transport Authority in Bratislava. The machine is truly hybrid, capable of driving on the road and then taking off if necessary, like a small plane. A runway 300 meters long is enough for it, once its wings are developed on each side and a drift is deployed at the rear.
This transformation is automatic and controlled by a single button. According to its manufacturers, it only takes 3 minutes for the car to spread its wings and therefore be able to fly. The Aircar can then fly at 170km/h at an altitude of 2500 meters, thanks to a 1.6 liter BMW engine.
Klein Vision is waiting to receive aircraft type certification in order to begin commercial operation of its Aircar. Its purchase price could reach between 600 and 700,000 euros.
Paris, the first city to welcome flying taxis?
The main objective of the companies that develop these small flying vehicles today is not to sell them to individuals but rather to put them at the service of collective mobility in cities. Like real flying taxis, sometimes autonomous and if possible electric.
Far from the AirCar, the eVTOL – electric vertical take-off and landing, which can be translated into French as electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft – are intended for this kind of use. These concepts are closest to large drones or small helicopters with many propellers.
Among the companies that are developing these new types of flying taxis are the Chinese company EHang or the German company Lilium. The United Kingdom also wants to launch its own flying taxi service.
However, perhaps the most successful experience is taking shape in France, in Paris. The German company Volocopter, in partnership with the ADP Group (formerly Aéroports de Paris) and the RATP, want to launch their own fleet of flying shuttles for the Paris Olympic Games in 2024.
Price of races
With these flying taxis, Paris will become one of the first cities in the world to use this new means of transport. Called “Volocity”, these flying taxis will therefore allow flights to be carried out at an altitude of between 200 and 350 meters high at an average speed of 80km/h. The eVTOLs should fly over the French capital to transport spectators from point A to point B, taking off from specific infrastructures: the “Vertiports”. ADP will thus ensure the construction of this new type of infrastructure, a future development opportunity for the company.
Before being able to fly over Île-de-France for the Paris Olympics, the Volocities should obtain certification from EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency) in early 2024.
“The price of the races has not yet been fixed for 2024”, specifies ADP.
Eventually, in 2030, ADP would like to be able to invoice its races for a price equivalent to that of VTCs.
