The first fully-electric flying car has been approved for flight by the Federal Aviation Administration, and can now be preordered by customers for about $300,000.
Alef Aeronautics’ flying car was granted a special airworthiness certification by the FAA, allowing it to conduct test flights of the car. The fully electric vehicle has a range of 200 miles on public roads. It can also launch vertically into the air with a flying range of 110 miles. It can fly in any direction. It is compact enough to fit in the typical garage. But it can only seat two people.
The company’s “Model A” car “can fly forward above the obstacles until a desired destination is reached,” the San Mateo-based company says. “The driver and the cabin are stabilized by a unique gimbaled rotating cabin design.”
Alef touts the car’s ability to avoid traffic, fly in any direction while giving a “cinematic 180 plus degree view for safe and enjoyable flight.”
The FAA says it “issued a Special Airworthiness Certificate for the Armada Model Zero aircraft on June 12, 2023. This certificate allows the aircraft to be used for limited purposes, including exhibition, research and development. This is not the first aircraft of its kind for which the FAA has issued a Special Airworthiness Certificate.”
Alef Aeronautics first unveiled the car last October and said it has already taken a “strong” number of preorders from people and businesses.
The FAA is still working on the regulatory framework for the takeoff and landing of electric vehicles, Alef said.
“We’re excited to receive this certification from the FAA,” says Alef CEO Jim Dukhovny. Dukhovny and his three co-founders first tried to create a flying car in 2015, when they realized it was the same year when Marty McFly drove one in “Back to the Future II.” Alef says that “During one of the Science Fiction lectures, Jim Dukhovny talked about how flying cars are finally possible in 2015. But he lacked technical skills to take on such a complicated task by himself.”
