Ah, flying cars! Is there anything in the automotive world that has been so wonderfully consistent in disappointing everyone, every time? No, there hasn’t!
Flying cars have the absolute finest track record when it comes to letting everyone down and never actually happening, which they have done again and again, managing, via some magical combination of time and technical development, to always and forever be about two years away. Now yet another company, Alef, has decided to pretend like this is going to be the time that flying cars actually happen. This one does look more car-like than most, for whatever that’s worth.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe this one will be the one that changes the game! Maybe we’re ready now, and all of the issues with weight and the dramatic increase of complexity of flying over driving are solved. Or how if something goes wrong, pulling over isn’t really an option – though to be fair, Alef does note they’ll have a full-aircraft parachute, so that would make plummets much more manageable. But this time it’ll be different!
The company got some attention recently thanks to videos like this one that show what looks sort of like a cartoonish “car” slowly and oddly gently jump-floating over an SUV. The whole thing looks surreal:
NEW: Alef Aeronautics releases footage of their electric car "jumping" over another car on a road in California.
The company claims this is the "first test in history of a car drive and vertical takeoff in a city."
The company hopes to solve traffic by developing a car that can… pic.twitter.com/fjrFDIBlbK
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 21, 2025
So, what exactly is going on there? The cartoony car-shaped thing is the Alef Model A, and it’s essentially a multi-rotor type of electric flying machine with a central passenger pod (with a stated capacity of 250 pounds, so I hope you and your passenger are pretty trim and unburdened by any sort of luggage). What looks like a hood and trunk is actually a perforated shell over the rotors, which are held in place via a simple, lightweight carbon fiber frame.
It’s not clear where the batteries are stored?
Each of the four skinny wheels has its own electric motor for ground-based motion, and the top speed is only 35 mph, at least according to the company’s initial estimates. I wonder if they’re deliberately limiting the speed so it would be classified as a Low Speed Neighborhood Electric Vehicle and would be exempt from actual crash testing and other real-car hassles. Range is claimed to be 200 miles on ground and about 110 miles above it.
When in actual flight, not just slo-mo car hopping, the Model A rotates onto its side as the passenger cabin gimbals to remain upright, because I suspect most people were not fond of flying while sitting sideways.
It’s sort of strange, but it makes sense, at least from a perspective of rotor orientation. When oriented like a conventional car, the vehicle can take off vertically and perform the sort of gentle hops over cars we saw in the first video:
Other promo videos for the company show the car hopping cavalierly over wrecks and traffic obstructions, which I suppose could work, though there’s something that feels oddly dickish about the maneuver. And if there are lots of similar hopping cars, you’re just going to get another traffic jam 20 feet or so above the ground:
Alef says they’ll have a production Model Z that’ll sell for $35,000 and go 400 miles on the ground and 200 in the air by 2030, and I trust this claim about as much as I trust dental floss to carry my weight if used as a zipline.
I think Alef is getting a bit of attention now because of the way their flying car looks and because of the strangeness of their videos. There are some real benefits to their concept – I don’t want to seem like a complete curmudgeon. For example, the lack of wings and VTOL capability are what something like this needs, and it looks like it could, hypothetically, transition from air to ground with ease.
[Mercedes’s note: I will also point out that it’s legally irrelevant if your “flying car” is an eVTOL. You will still need a pilot license and takeoffs and landings will need to happen at airports. The dream of getting stuck in traffic and then just taking off is entirely unrealistic. Consider that many major airports are located outside of city centers, so you won’t really beat traffic that much by flying your car. Certainly, it’s not something the average person is going to be able to do, either. – MS]
That said, this also solves none of the major issues around flying cars – driver/pilot training, air traffic issues, range, durability vs. lightness, limited capacity, all of that – so I’m not really convinced this is anything other than another “perpetually two-year-away flying nonsense-car.”
Also, what’s with “the world’s first real flying car?” I wonder what hyper-specific criteria they’re using to make that claim. Maybe no removable or foldable wings? Because there have been “flying cars” of one sort or another since the 1940s.
Remember the Convair Model 118 from 1947?
The Alef Model A will cost $299,999 (that’s the expected price) and you can pre-order one for $150 or be in the “priority queue” for $1,500. The company claims it has about 2,800 pre-orders, and they expect the first cars to be built at the end of this year. I expect that’s wildly optimistic.
Whatever. Maybe this time will be different! Either way, it is kinda fun to see these videos. I’d definitely be curious to try one of these, just for fun, but I probably killed that chance by writing this.
Oh well. I’ll just buy one in two years!
Imagine how much faster the Convair Model 118 would have been with a DS21 slung underneath.
$300,000. That buys more than 900 trips around Kauai in a Eurocopter or MD/Hughes helicopter that has proven its safety and is flown by someone who knows what they are doing. I dropped $1K this past week doing exactly that, taking up a couple of friends who had never been in one and it’s spectacular. The smiles on their faces were so worth it. Money well spent.
I grew up in Davis,CA and used to deliver the newspaper to Dr. Paul Moller who has been chasing this dream since the 60s. This article Paul Moller’s 50-year dream to build a flying car won’t die – Fast Company sums up the last 50 years or so of his efforts, but I remember going to the UC Davis airport with my dad, who was a UCD firefighter, for a press event back in the 60s. (Dr. Moller still had an early prototype in his garage when I dropped the paper off. Along with an Avante. Interesting guy.)
There was no flight demo that day, but many years later, as a TV news photographer, I worked with the reporter who covered the event for KCRA. I remembered him and he remembered that day as clearly as I did. RIP Bill Harvey.
If this were real, it would be great to see the confrontations after John Doe flies his drone-car over an obstacle, then lands it with FOD-launching air burst next to Joseph Doe’s Land Rover and Jeremy Doe’s S-class. Should be in the courts for years.
Try that in Santa Ana winds. I’d love to watch.
Can you say “Babe Magnet?”
Question I guess for Mercedes, depending on weight/performance would eVTOL still apply? Like if it meets ultralight specs for weight and top speed, could you take off/land outside of airports? Still wouldn’t be able to fly over people per ultralight regs so still the hop over cars scenario doesn’t work. But that thing looks fairly flimsy, I could see it being within ultralight specs.
Yeah that was my thinking too.
This is really stupid.
I can’t imagine that’s doing much good for the glass and paint finish of the car beneath it.
90% of people have a hard time just driving. Are we sure we want to change people into pilots?