Alef Aeronautics Certified by FAA to Test $300,000 Flying Car

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Santa Clara, California-based Alef Aeronautics has been certified for test flights be able to take off into the air vertically and fly like a helicopter up to 110 miles on a single charge.

The whole car becomes a wing, a circular wing.

Alef is taking pre-orders for a $150 deposit.

The company is backed by Tim Draper.

It was flying with a smaller scaled prototype since 2018 and has had some full scale flights.

It has a carbon-fiber body with an open, mesh-like top with four propellers on each side. The car takes off vertically and the entire vehicle turns on its side. The two-seat cockpit swiveling as well. The propellers to steer it like an oversized flying drone.

25 thoughts on “Alef Aeronautics Certified by FAA to Test $300,000 Flying Car”

  1. I am a big fan of eVTOLs, combining it with a car I see as not only very difficult without incredible batteries, but pointless. If you are going from point A to point B, just fly the whole way. Making it a car means complying with loads of regulations and making it crashworthy. Just way too much. And why do you want to be on the road? Roads have loads of other vehicles, traffic lights, and inefficient routes to your destination.
    Even if you could do it, the range would be terrible compared with an eVTOL that is just designed to fly.
    What we need are autonomous, 4-seaters that are not huge, at least when parked, personally owned, have a range of 300 miles, and ideally $200,000 or less. That is a lot of boxes to tick.
    It should also be pretty light, so people can retrofit their garage roof as a landing pad without too much difficulty, or build a platform above their driveway, that is not too expensive. I think that is where you want it. It does not fill your driveway, fewer people are going to mess with it, and if you already have charging stuff for a car, it should not be that difficult to have a charging system for the eVTOL put in up above the garage/driveway.
    And I would always have it land one floor up or more. Relatively easy for stores and businesses to have a parking deck above the asphalt parking lot.
    But I also see parking garages where you can drive your car, very close by and transfer to an eVTOL taxi on the roof, and then fly somewhere autonomously.

    • What we need are
      autonomous,
      4-seaters that are not huge, at least when parked,
      personally owned,
      have a range of 300 miles,
      and ideally $200,000 or less.
      It should also be pretty light,
      to retrofit garage roof as a landing pad,
      or build a platform above their driveway,
      that is not too expensive.

      DANG! Perhaps you’ll take a few minutes to review the much longer physics reply I penned, here.

      The real problem is that your very reasonable sounding wish-list requires a LOT of heavy-duty magic from the as yet not-invented technologies to get there. Magic and magic wands are the death of science fiction-turned-to-fact narratives.

      AUTONOMOUS …

      requires FAA vetting, scoping, spec’ing and then cerfication-certification-certification. Easily a 20 year endeavor.

      4-SEATERS …

      requires a payload of 100 kg/person, assuming a mix of passengers-and-baggage that aren’t ALL NFL linebackers and Sumo wrestlers. Or Tongans. … just saying.

      PERSONALLY OWNED …

      of course depends wholely on just-how-much the things are going to cost. Ever priced out relatively teeny-tiny but still competent commercially produced private planes? $150 K to $750 K range. These might be on par to that.

      RANGE OF 300 MILES …

      The physics requires lifting the 400 kg of passengers, 800 kg of batteries, 200 kg of airframe and failsafe contraptions, who knows how much electronics, RADAR, AI stuff, and creature comforts higher than Lawn Chairs. Say 1800 kg. By the dynamics I laid out herein, that’s going to take better than 300 kW. An might buzz at 125 knots. So, 2½ hours of loft time? 700 kWh? 6 or more of the top-shelf Tesla batteries?

      $200,000 or LESS? …

      Oh, sure. 6𝒙 the batteries of a top-shelf Tesla. 450 HP of motors-rotors-props. Ah… err… add at least 1 zero to that ($2 million).

      I’LL STOP here …

      Because the compound requirement list far, far, FAR exceeds even what we could do at present or the near future with conventional ultracompact internal combustion engines (having 10× the mass-to-energy margin as lithium batteries).

  5. I’m not optimistic that this will work out. Unless it’s fully automated you’ll have Johnny Q. Publics flying these things. And think about how poorly some people drive in two dimensions.

  6. Been following this since it first was reported, and have only found CGI renders and pictures of what appears to be at least two very different-looking prototypes sitting on a trailer or in a parking lot. The renders appear to be using an invisible battery, and the actual structure looks ridiculously flimsy. I assume it would also need some means of providing power to the wheels when driving on the ground, but the render shows nothing that I can see to actually make it either fly OR drive conventionally. Honestly, it looks like a flying screen door. I wonder what the NTSA is going to think…

  7. I’ve analyzed ‘flying cars’ many times here on Next Big Future. Ultimately, there is an irreducible triple problem which is defined by physics itself: mass, airflow speed and parasitic losses.

    [1] The MASS problem

    You have (1) passenger(s), (2) pod, (3) passive airframe, (4) motors-rotors, (5) batteries, (6) electricals, (7) failsafe equipment, (8) navigation-and-computing … and the (9) airframe to support all that and itself.

    In the case of an flying car, you’ve also got (10) wheels, brakes, motors, steering and its electronics.

    Between these, the ‘problem’ is that airframe mass grows along with the mass of the others. Heavier batteries, bigger airframe. More passengers (2?), more airframe. More rotors, more electricals, more airframe. And those wheels and ‘car stuff’? More airframe. AND MUTUALLY SO… more batteries, bigger rotors, yada, yada.
    ________________________________________

    [2] The airflow speed (energy) problem

    In a nutshell, LIFT is generated by accelerating ambient air ‘down’ across the area of the rotors. If for example, one has a rotor of 1 square meter, spinning at whatever rate needed to deliver 20 meters per second of airflow, with a mass of about 1.2 kg per cubic meter of air, then 24 kg is accelerated. The impulse force of that is “mv” mass times velocity – 24 kg × 20 m/s = 480 newstons or 48 kg of lift in round terms.

    Well, that’s nigh a passenger, airframe, motors, batteries and geegaws. Léts estimate those at 300 kg. NOT very much, all told. Léts go on to have 3 square meters of rotors, and back calculate things…

    F = mv
    m = 1.2 v A (sea level) so
    F = 1.2 v² A (A is area)

    A = 3 m²
    F = 300 kg = 3000 N
    3000 = 1.2 v² 3
    800 = v²
    29 m/s = v

    Hey! Sounds do-able. 30 m/s is only 65 miles per hour. But, what is the invested energy?

    E = ½ mv² + parasitics
    E = ½ × 1.2 × 3 × v³
    E = 1.8 × 29³
    E = 44,000 J/s

    And that is the energy of the airstream, absent vortices, propeller noise and loss, rotor motor losses, electrical conversion losses and so forth. One might rationally set it at ‘50%’ and not be uncharitable.

    So, 88 kW input energy. 120 horse.

    Remember that ‘mass problem’? Our total of 300 kg included batteries. How many? Well, if this has 1 passenger and her stuff … at only 100 kg of the 300, the remaining 200 kg more or less ‘at most’ can only be 50% battery mass. Its kind of hard to imagine all the rest fitting in 100 kg.

    And 100 kg of batteries, at today’s FINEST PROJECTED performance of 0.5 kWh/kg, is 50 kWh. Consuming 88 kW to keep ‘the bird’ in the air is thus what, ⁵⁰⁄₈₈ = 0.56 hours or 30 minutes of hovering time. From wheels up, to wheels down, with NO leftover juice ‘just in case’.

    The airflow-speed problem and the energy to attain LIFt are real phyics gotchas.
    ________________________________________

    [3] The parasitic losses problem

    I kind of alluded to it above. In a nutshell, NOTHING is 100% efficient. You cannot stick ‘1 kWh’ in a battery and get 1 kWh of juice out of it upon discharge. You cannot put 1 kW in a motor and expect ot get 1 kW of power out of its spindle. Everything loses energy along the conversion path.

    I estimated above ‘50%’ as being charitable. Maybe that might be too inefficient. One could argue higher … maybe even up to 75%. It however requires extraordinary efficiencies in motors, electronics, airflow and a remarkable lack of parasitics like rotor vortices and attendant noise. In any case, the proposition of the flying car isn’t aided in ANY WAY by lofting wheels, tires, steering columns and gears. Nor is it aided by ACTUAL present-day or around-the-corner battery pack realities.

    Ideally, if one wants to (reflecting the article’s rah-rah claims) whiz off to a destination 100 km distant, the battery pack needs to have 135% of the juice to do the run. So as to allow for air traffic hovering, cross winds, things not accounted for at the start. Flying at 100 km/hr (neither very fast, nor for hovercraft, very slow) the trip takes an hour. And thus requires well over 100 kWh of battery pack.

    And that might be what, 200 kg tomorrow, or well over 350 kg today using best-announcement tech?

    PARASITICS … again. Uh, oh. 350 kg of battery requires beefier motors, propellers, bigger electronics. That’s additional mass, but also in turn requires bigger airrame. Uh, oh. PARASITICS is a compound problem. There certainly is a limit-case, yet it is certainly the case that more ‘m’ here requires more ‘m’ there.

    My guess is that a real practical ‘flying car’ cannot have the range and flight times being bandied about until battery tech exceeds 1 kWh/kg. Using only the above formulæ and nothing more, It is trivial to ‘reality check’ the claims made of this cute looking ‘flying car’. It’d have to weigh in at least at 500 kg, of which 250 kg would be battery. And it’d be as noisy as heck. Hence its spherical passenger pod. And it’d have to have parachutes. Failsafe.

    We just don’t have 1 kWh/kg batteries yet, at all. Not packaged up and ready to plug in. Not SAFE tech, with internal heat flow mitigation. Not close.
    ________________________________________

    And that’s the problem in a nutshell.

    So, while don’t be overly impressed by the computer graphics and CGI video renderings. ANYONE can do that part, as it doesn’t require accounting for physics itself. It is the veritable grist of the public relations mill: generate lots of glorious images, graphics, videos and spicy supporting text. Pepper it with hopeful projections, marvelous claims, reasonable sounding seasonings. Mash it all together into a business proposition, and let the investors flow! Yay!

    Pre-orders for $150 a shot? Gimme a break.

    GoatGuy

    • I agree with your conclusions. The analysis seems to assume it’s a helicopter throughout the entire trip, though many eVTOL systems transition to airplane mode for the majority of the trip to make it a little more efficient.

      But until we get 1 kWh/kg batteries, none of these approaches are going to be very practical. And I doubt it will ever be practical to add all the wasted mass needed to make an eVTOL also be a car that drives on roads.

      • [and what are the police’ and rescue fly cars look like?
        While having regenerative breaking with cars on roads, it’s not much margin (at least not efficient with increased hardware (gears, variable pitch, ?) circumstances) for getting energy from potential altitude changes(?) and having constant speeds efficiency is reduced with necessity on maintaining hoovering (without wings or equivalent options). There’s already (too?) much change in many society’s areas of daily life, for masses to be expected going from pick-up/5-7 passengers (incl. cargo) instantly to flying cars, yet(?)]

    • I doubt that it will ever be feasible, barring nuclear power, to have a flying vehicle which is also a car, self contained. And certainly not electric.

      What you could have is a fairly light weight car, and an extremely large array of lifting fans that has a winch arrangement beneath it. When you want to go for a fly, you summon one, and it latches onto the roof of your car, and away you go. The winch arrangement avoids it having to deal with ground level obstacles, and spreads the downdraft.

      This allows the lifting portion to be extremely large relative to the car, so more energy efficient, and you don’t carry it around when you’re not flying. Conceivably you could do this on both ends; The passenger cabin is attached to an exchangeable ground “skate”, too, which you leave behind when taking to the air, and summon a new one as you land.

      While I think this is technically feasible, similar to solving the range problem on electric cars by swapping batteries instead of charging them while you wait, as it’s not self contained it has a bit of a start up problem in terms of scale; You need the whole system for it to be useful.

      • I like your concept quite a bit: it could be implemented as ‘personal turbolift’:, with a drop-down 1 person cage from the overhead shuttle. Quite convenient, like a taxi. Call, hop in, confirm identity, and like über and Lyft, off you go to the destination pre-arranged. Up and away! The pod itself I envision as being cozy, warmed or cooled, with a surround window, and high-deviation landing feet/stabilizers. The overhead shuttle would not even need to be ‘electric’ powered, for all that. Sheesh … a boring old double blade helicoptor could suffice quite well. The tether ought not need to be longer than 100 meters.

        At the other end, very large quad-rotor helicoptors could also be shuttles. No reason at all not to let them lift ANY ‘compatible’ rated car. Would need either a thicker rated steel magnetic roof tab, or something that would attach via a more power-loss-failsafe set of hooks. Computer controlled and mate-up targeted.

        I think it would also bypass the FAA human-driver problem well. Computer automation and high-sensor density collision avoidance would make it a totally autonomous system.

        ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
        ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

        • You need a connector that remains locked until actively unlocked while not under tension. Not hard to design.

          I originally thought this up as a high value service, rescuing individual cars from bad traffic jams…

  10. Good luck to them. Would we really need to drive on roads if we can fly? I guess while batteries are limiting….

    • There is a good chance that many cities will have a “no flight” zone or some kind of limitation for eVTOLs.
      Another problem is the eVTOL landing pads infrastructure that may cause problems in many dense urban areas.
      So if you have a flying car, and you want to fly to town for work, you can fly to a large landing zone with multiple pads for parallel landing of several flying cars. Then you drive to your office under ground parking (where you will recharge your batteries).
      Of course you can use regular eVTOL, land in a eVTOL parking area and take a taxi to work…
      But in that scenario the eVTOL parking needs a lot of parking area and charging infrastructure to parallel load hundreds or thousands of eVTOLs. Where a fly car just need a landing pad.

      • In some of the old SF, cities that had “air cars” had such powerful downdrafts that only the most powerful vehicles could remain in the air near the city center. Written by people who understood physics, and were gaming out the implications of things.

        Yes, I think that “air cars” would probably be restricted to emergency vehicles in urban areas.

  11. So, basically two big fans one in front and one behind the driver’s compartment which is gimbled. The mystery is where are the batteries hidden.

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