Designer Stefan Klein has been tinkering with the AirCar for decades. Now he has made a breakthrough.
At first glance, the white and gray AirCar looks like a sleek, but slightly overlong sports car with a rear spoiler that is a bit too big.
Legend:
Looks like a car, is one too, but not only: Stefan Klein’s AirCar.
SRF/Roman Fillinger
But then Stefan Klein presses a button, and four small motors and eighty sensors open the roof of the sports car like an oyster. Two wings unfold and are lowered sideways.
Legend:
200 meters of runway for take-off, 50 for landing – and then the AirCar can start.
Klein Vision
If the AirCar weren’t parked in his garage at the sleepy airfield in the Slovakian city of Nitra, Klein would only have to turn on the large propeller behind the driver’s cabin and he could take off.
The difficult transformation
The transformation from car to plane and back was the most difficult thing in the development of the flying car, says the engineer and designer: “We wanted to be able to turn the car into a plane in less than three minutes.”
Legend:
In 2022 the AirCar received the approval of the authorities. However, the road to get there was a long one.
Klein Vision
The now 62-year-old has been tinkering with the flying car for more than 30 years, since his engineering studies. “When I developed the first prototype, I thought: ‘This is going to be very easy. I take something from the car, something from the plane and put it together.’ But that was the wrong way.”
Once the car was too heavy to fly. Then the wings were too expansive to drive on the street. And finally, Klein even crashed with a prototype and was only able to save himself with a parachute.
Klein and his seven developers have now solved these technical problems. Last year, the Slovakian authorities officially declared the AirCar airworthy.
Farther than Boeing and Airbus
This is a breakthrough. The Slovakian inventors have thus left their powerful competition behind. Even large aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing or Airbus are trying to develop flying cars. But they are not as far as Klein and the small team here in the garage at the Nitra airfield.
200 meters of runway for take-off and 50 meters for landing are enough.
But does a flying car still make sense at a time when it is all about making traffic more environmentally friendly? Inventor Klein says his flying car consumes no more fuel per kilometer than a normal one. And: “Flying cars need fewer roads. 200 meters of runway for take-off and 50 meters for landing are enough.»
This is a great advantage, especially in countries that have a poorly developed road network, such as Brazil or Russia. His concept of using the streets in the city but flying the long distances is particularly useful there.
Cost point: 500,000 to one million Swiss francs
And finally, says Klein, the AirCar will initially be reserved for a few anyway. The price alone makes sure of that: the flying car is said to cost between half a million and a million francs.
But it will still be a few years before you can buy it. Before it goes on sale, the AirCar should get more than just a seat, a more powerful engine and real doors. Those who spend so much money not only want to fly, they also want to drive comfortably.