How cool are flying cars? Well, that is, if they existed yet beyond concepts, limited test cases, and vague hand gestures in the direction of The Jetsons. Right now, even in motorsport based around flying cars, what’s really happening is glorified drone racing with chassis that could, theoretically, fit a person in – but surely things aren’t going to stay like this, right? All that technology, money, and development time has to be heading somewhere.
Well, according to the CEO of Airspeeder, the flying car racing competition and company, flying cars are heading for your driveway “very soon”, as discussed at a SXSW Sydney panel aptly named ‘Flying car in your driveway? Sooner than you think.’
“The key thing is that these are going to be very expensive vehicles, the regulations still hold it back, so, how do you make money with a vehicle that’s very expensive and can only go in circles on a patch of grass?” CEO Matt Pearson said during the panel.
Pearson’s talking very much about the development of the Airspeeder racing series in the quote above, but he’s trying to tie the development of the sport into the commercialisation of flying cars. If you aren’t familiar, Airspeeder has been racing flying cars (flown wirelessly from a command station, without somebody in the cockpit) for a little while – you can watch a series focused on the development of the vehicles on Kayo.
Right now, the series only includes three drivers and three teams, with aspirations to function much more like Formula 1, which boasts a 20-26 car lineup at racetracks, with cars and upgrades informing the development of consumer-focused models. Pearson’s dream follows technology’s natural progression – original models are restrictively expensive, followed by less expensive models later on.
“I don’t even want to know how much the vehicles are costing us now, especially when we’re crashing them,” Pearson added.
“The next step is kind of, flying hypercars [a class of car more powerful and expensive than sports or super cars], something like the price of a Ferrari. You have maybe a few million dollars, and then after that, we’ll do a more, maybe like a flying Aston Martin, you know, $400,000, so it’s still out of reach financially for a lot of people, but there’s order of magnitude steps down in price. It’s the same as Tesla did with the Roadster, Model S, and then eventually, you get the Model 3.”
But it’s all a bit aspirational right now – you can’t escape just how much of this is wishful thinking. After all, Airspeeder itself only revealed its first manned flying car earlier this year, with the car still yet to appear in races. Part of that is obviously huge costs, but another key part is regulation.
Overseas, there have been laws introduced to catch up to flying cars before the technology even really materialises in a consumer-facing way. In the U.S., for example, drivers need at least 20 hours of certified experience before flying one such vehicle. Locally, rules around drones and aircraft are handled by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), which released a road map to regulatory development of ‘Advanced Air Mobility’ vehicles.
“The guys at CASA are super progressive, as well, wanting to help us. They know we’re pioneering something that is coming to your skies soon, so, very often we’ll be working with them there, and they’ve got to make decisions about how the legislation will change for the whole of Australia,” Pearson said.
For the moment, Airspeeder is planning to stay in South Australia, testing the flying cars and getting them ready for more ambitious races. Though Pearson said that flying these cars is something that a consumer could realistically do (admittedly not as fast as a trained pilot), the company isn’t planning to develop a consumer-oriented flying car just yet, though he did tease an upcoming model with more “bells and whistles”, on the topic of Spotify and Apple CarPlay.
It’s difficult to put a date to it, but with how far the technology has progressed, Pearson’s hoping that, one day, these bad boys could be parked out the front of your home.
Image: Zachariah Kelly/Gizmodo Australia
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