The Australian startup called Alauda came out of stealth mode this week to announce its plans to host the world's first "flying car" race in 2019. It built its own scaled-down prototype, a racecar-shaped quadcopter called the Alauda Mark 1 Airspeeder, that it plans on testing in 2018. And naturally it has been taken to Kickstarter to raise money to all its efforts.
It's a twist on the typical story we hear these days about flying cars. While most engineers and developers think the only possible use case for these vertical take-off and landing vehicles (VTOLs) - f oversized drones, different direction. Its focus is on speed and sport. Its goal, in its own words, is to build "the Ferrari of the sky."
But does this qualify as a flying car? I'm not supposed to be the ultimate arbiter on what is and not a flying car - I'm on record using "flying car", but I'm pretty sure I've already lost that fight - but It seems that Alauda is working on more and more of human-piloted drone aircraft that are being developed in Russia and elsewhere. By calling its prototype a "flying car," it is clear that Alauda is trying to own itself in the same category as the company's like Kitty Hawk, Airbus, and Uber, all of which work on some variation of the technology.
There are lots of skeptics that say flying cars, especially electric-powered aircraft, are not worth pursuing. They wonder if the economics work, or if the passengers will get on board a self-flying vehicle. "Obviously, I like flying things," Elon Musk recently said to Bloomberg. "But it's difficult to imagine the flying car becoming a scalable solution."
But does this qualify as a flying car? I'm not supposed to be the ultimate arbiter on what is and not a flying car - I'm on record using "flying car", but I'm pretty sure I've already lost that fight - but It seems that Alauda is working on more and more of human-piloted drone aircraft that are being developed in Russia and elsewhere. By calling its prototype a "flying car," it is clear that Alauda is trying to own itself in the same category as the company's like Kitty Hawk, Airbus, and Uber, all of which work on some variation of the technology.
There are lots of skeptics that say flying cars, especially electric-powered aircraft, are not worth pursuing. They wonder if the economics work, or if the passengers will get on board a self-flying vehicle. "Obviously, I like flying things," Elon Musk recently said to Bloomberg. "But it's difficult to imagine the flying car becoming a scalable solution."
