The world's most advanced flying car, AeroMobil 3.0, was unveiled today at Pioneers Festival in Vienna. WIRED first got its eyes on an AeroMobil prototype only a few months ago, at which point the unveiling the 3.0 model was slated for next year. But ahead of schedule, WIRED.co.uk has now seen AeroMobil 3.0 in person, which has folding insect-like wings and a spacecraft-cum-sportscar cockpit not only in the flesh, but in flight, thanks to footage released by the team today.
AeroMobil 3.0 - official videoAeroMobil
"We get lots of offers from auto shows," says AeroMobil co-founder Juraj Vaculik. "We decided pioneers festival is so right for us." As much as they are designers and engineers, Vaculik and his partner Stefan Klein are also entrepreneurs, and their projects have been primarily self-funded.
Behind the development of the AeroMobil is the idea that people should be able travel freely, but the Vaculik says they have also been inspired by the idea they can free people from the "daily prison we are all in" -- that is the "traffic jam prison" and the "airport prison". This statement provides insight into the two primary applications of the vehicle -- overcoming traffic- and airport-related problems -- but there is a third, not entirely unrelated application too.
"There are still a lot of countries where there is not an infrastructure," says Vaculik. Only three percent of the world has paved road and the AeroMobil team believes they have built the kind of vehicle capable of overcoming problems caused by lack of this infrastructure in many places.
One of the key features of the AeroMobil 3.0 is that it is fully capable of making use of existing infrastructure for both planes and cars. It only needs a grass strip of around 250 metres to take off and 50 metres to land. The vehicle has undergone rigorous testing and has even undertaken its maiden flight.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-10/29/aeromobil-3-0