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!
You know what? This one is kinda cool. Nice work, flying car company!
This isn’t a good idea, but at least it’s a unique idea.
This is a large drone that is shaped not completely unlike a car – but it in not a car. There is no person inside piloting this thing because, again, it’s just a drone. It cannot lift an occupant with those small rotors. Nor can it carry a battery large enough to give it a flight time of more than 15-20 minutes, and that’s without a human pilot on board. Stop with the whole battery powered everything revolution, it’s not happening. Again – not a car.
A drone, and one that is probably sacrificing a huge amount of power efficiency because it is being hampered by sucking all its air thru gratings. The gratings have to be lowering the pressure above the blades, reducing lift.
Gotta love a “car” that fits no passengers, no luggage, has the body of a wiffle ball, and hilarious little wagon wheels!
“ This Flying Car Video Looks Like A Bad Animation But It Seems To Be Real”
You had it right the first time, Jason. This is completely fake, testing (trolling?) the gullibility of the public. Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYcwZobwbu8 turned up to 4k to really see. The texture on the vehicle compared to the background makes no sense as it goes over the Yukon, drives in the field or goes over the Lexus. It’s a cartoon.
The slow walkaround in the neighborhood could ‘possibly’ be a real physical vehicle, but given the rest of the video I doubt it.
Also, they’re going to cut the price from $300k to $35k in just five years? C’mon! That’s next level vaporware
I agree that this thing is EXTREMELY likely to be vaporware, but to my eye it does appear as if the “jumping” footage is legit (but probably a passenger-less prototype with a tiny battery) and anything after the 1:40 mark is very obviously CG.
But these demos do things that, while not impossible to fake, are difficult and expensive to do well: plants and dust dynamically blowing around from the rotors’ gusts, the awkward and slightly unstable flight path, the wheels rotating and settling after takeoff, the moving camera, and the way LED taillights shine in bright sun are all telling me that they actually shot on phone and tried this for real.
But still, don’t put in a deposit for this.
The peripheral elements you mentioned do look better than the car itself, and are clever distractions to help sell the fake; but it’s still obvious if you focus on the car. The glare from the sun and reflection on the body panels are the biggest telltales. The way it bobs around also looks unnatural compared to other craft in a similar situation.
Regarding cost, most VFX is in the $2-5k/min range, and at the high end up to $20k/min. There’s 1:45 of questionable video, so AT MOST it cost $35k, more likely $5-7.5k.
Do you think a functional prototype could be built for less than that?
I’m no expert but leaning almost 100% digitally drawn over videos of a standard large drone doing these same maneuvers. On the Yukon jump I swear there’s something funky going on with the perspective where if you look at the shadows it flies directly over the Yukon, but my eye’s say it’s closer to the camera.
Real/good prototype? No.
Painted foam with some large rotors and an empty plastic shell in the middle. Sure!
All I’m saying is, I think *something* flew in that footage, but this product will still never exist.
I agree. I think the one car hopping vid looks like a legit RC mock-up made out of fabric and balsa wood with enough battery power for about a 30 sec flight. Obviously, the flying through the valley and across the bridge, and over the semi wreck are all AI/CGI.
I’d be interested in whether there is anyone stupid enough to believe a single word of Alif’s business plan/sales pitch to the point of actually plonking down cash for a reservation. The stench of scam is overwhelming.
The spirit of Liz Carmichael apparently lives on.
Oooo yeah: I support the flying mock up theory 100%
The car hopping vid looks like it could be a half-sized drone, at half the distance to the camera as the car so that it appears to be the same size.
I could tell right away it was fake just because of the added camera jitter. It’s not full frame video, it has a passepartout that the footage artificially bounds off the edges of to simulate being shaky handheld video. It hides the smoothness of 3D animation. It’s an absolutely ancient trick from the first days of mass available 3D animation that everybody copied from Cloverfield.
I hate using that effect and never implement it because if I can tell other people can tell. I will painstakingly bake the entire animation path and then edit it by hand.
I was an 80s kid who read ALL the “popular” magazines from the 60s-90s, so I was drinking the Kool-aid.
Then my dad, an aviation guru, just say “We already have flying cars, they’re called helicopters” and my childhood was ruined.
So of course I say that to my kids now, too. The main thing that helicopters have that most quad-/multicopters don’t have is that fancy “autorotation” thing. Humans today can’t be bothered to check their tire pressure or oil. They should not leave the ground.
Well, for sure there won’t be hypermilers while flying. And no one will be able to coast to next charger.
It is not a flying car. A car can to 80mph on a freeway. This would be a golf cart, except a golf cart would be able to carry your clubs.
“and go 400 miles on the ground and 200 in the air by 2030″
Fucking lmao. Yeah right. The stated capacity on this thing is 250 pounds, and I highly doubt their model has anywhere near the battery capacity to fly 200 miles. The batteries in a Tesla Model 3 (comparable driving range) weigh 1,000 pounds according to google. Even if you can strip this thing down to needing half batteries of a model 3 to go the same distance, that’s 500 pounds of just batteries! Then you probably need more powerful rotors to lift this, further adding weight and noise.
But let’s assume they figure all that out. They manage to strip this thing down so much that it actually can fly and drive that far. Who wants to ride in it for 400 miles? Think a Tesla interior is spartan? Wait till you see this thing. Hope you like seats with no cushion at all.
Dare I say this is uglier than a cybertwuck?
As in, “I dwive a Cybotwuck”? Because I lol’d.
This guy gets it!
I suspect the founder thought “maybe I’llF this up all by myself” and presto a brand was created.
Retangular drone with rolling wheels for when on the ground.
I NEVER want flying “cars” so many idiots cannot drive in 2D, no way in hell should we give them another dimension to screw up.
That is all I needed to read. You know you are selling vaporware when the “price/pre-order price” has a ratio of 2000:1.
People crash their cars all the time. “Flying cars” would just unleash a new reign of terror from above. As we already live in the worst possible timeline, I’m starting to think flying cars might actually be coming soon to wreak havoc on society.
I’m going to help you all get in on the ground floor for the biggest disruption in flying cars for years.
A helicopter….. that can drive!
I’m currently accepting investor capital with an outlook of 1.5 years!
Welcome to Hellicar…..”It’ll happen”.
Why would I need a flying car in two years when I can already work from home right now?
Today I did my commute in my pajamas, and the only congestion was a hug with the best person in the world.
I love my WFH days. It’s absolutely glorious.
I’m so tired of seeing this sort of crap over and over again.
Flying cars will not happen as long as physics work the way they do. Anyone trying to push a product like this is either a moron or a conman.
My vote is for ‘conman’.
come on… that thing looks like a modern version of one of those kits that you ordered out of Popular Mechanics and powered with a lawnmower engine. i fully expect to never hear about this company again, except maybe that early investors can’t get their money back.
Ha! What a total joke/scam/ripoff
The 1st and only one that really matters is the DeLorean! That’s real, right? That’s the only cool one anyway (and the flying train)
“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need ROADS!”
Honestly the vibe of that video and how it was filmed I immediately thought BTTF.
The train is the preferred option here (I acknowledge my bias towards steampunk even 15 years after it stopped being cool) because if we have any sort of hovertech revolution I want it to be public transportation with trained (ha) operators and not in the hands of folks who would otherwise be rolling coal or sidewaysing their Mustang out of C&C.
How did flying cars ever become something that some people wanted? Even if they worked, keeping them from crashing into each other seems like a much harder problem than the flying part. I certainly wouldn’t want any flying over me.
Also why do people keep calling these things flying cars? They don’t really have much in the way of car attributes.
The only thing that I can figure is that putting flying cars in a story set the bar for the suspension of disbelief, conveniently high, so that the author didn’t really have to do much work to make it believable after that.
It came from science fiction, which used to tease futures where there’s no traffic because everyone is buzzing around in their flying car. A lot of these companies make references to the Jetsons as inspiration.
I didn’t need more proof that we live in a time that BS flies.
They should call this thing the Locust because that’s what it’s going to look like at rush hour if these proliferate, a swarm of locusts rising out of a cornfield.
Now my idea for a Personal Free Flight Transport – or PFFT – is a giant sphere made of Nerf Ball material surrounding a gimbaled carbon fiber passenger cage, power and propulsion unit, and full AI self-navigation system.
A pilots license will be unnecessary because passengers will not direct the craft, but simply speak a destination. There won’t even be windows. Deconfliction won’t be necessary because the Nerf hull will absorb collision energy and transfer it through a regen system to replenish a lightweight, solid state battery, while the PFFT crafts just roll around each other and proceed on.
On the ground, the PFFT can roll harmlessly over most obstacles, including pedestrians! And you can even store it in a regular garage as the PFFT easily compresses down to a size no larger than your average compact car.
Development testing on the propulsion system, navigation computer and Nerf hull are in the final stages and commercial rollout is anticipated in two years. Advance reservations are a fully refundable $200 and being taken now. Reserve your place in line today because by 2027, we’ll all be going PFFT!
You son of a bitch, I’m in.
“giant sphere”
Bubble boy, is that you?
GEORGE: Oh, Noooo, I’m so sorry. It’s the MOOPS. The correct answer is, The MOOPS.
DONALD: MOOPS? LET ME SEE THAT. THAT’S NOT MOOPS YOU JERK, IT’S MOORS. IT’S A MISPRINT.
GEORGE: I’m sorry the card says MOOPS.
DONALD: IT DOESN’T MATTER. I’S THE MOORS. THERE’S NO MOOPS.
GEORGE: It’s MOOPS.
DONALD: MOORS.
GEORGE: MOOPS,
DONALD: MOORS!
Pfft.
I believe you had to have won the internet yesterday
Even if it works, where are you going in a car that seats one and stores nothing?
the same places you go on a (non-full bagger) motorcycle?
As one example, at the time this photo was taken I was going to work:
https://live.staticflickr.com/3550/5733681301_89a874e566_c.jpg
I guess the board of Nikola needed a new place to meet. I get the whole evtol quad copter thing they try every once in a while in Vegas Singapore and Dubai. If they manage to make it it will do 1/3 of what they claim and cost 5x more. There is some interesting work being done with lighter batteries for aviation and space.
Is that still true if these qualify as ultralights?
Probably not? But 254lbs would be quite the tough target. Maybe with composites who knows.
There’s no way this thing is an ultralight. But, if it is, now you have a new fun problem because the FAA isn’t fond of ultralights flying over populated areas or in certain airspace. So now it’s even less useful than advertised.
It’s a drone! Just a drone pilot license from the FAA after a quick test online. No problem.
(Total sarcasm if not obvious)
Give it another week and there won’t be an FAA.
Ah, playing the long game! Can’t wait for ChatGPT ATC. Just think of how much it sucks normally, but now while you’re flying! “Cleared to land on runway I-90.” lol
There are four planes in the runway.
There are no planes in runway.
Sorry about that.
I checked again, and there are definitely three planes in the runway.
There are four lights!
“The company hopes to solve traffic by developing a car that can simply fly over it”
I guarantee you that this thing will NOT solve traffic. All this means is some rich asshole will try to butt in front of you, fuck up and land ontop of someone’s car.
Honestly, Elon Musk’s ‘Boring Company’ is actually a better idea… and even that isn’t all that great of an idea.
What WILL help ease traffic is better urban planning and more mass transit.
And I saw another video of this ‘car’ driving on the ground and what I saw suggest it’s absolutely terrible as far as cars go.
Like other ‘flying cars’, I expect that either this won’t make it into production OR if it does, the production will be limited, the vehicles insanely expensive while also being crap and after a few years, the company will be out of business.