AeroMobil has been around for five years, pursuing the dream of building a functional and (somewhat) practical flying car. Its third-gen prototype was revealed last October, and today at SXSW, AeroMobil CEO Juraj Vaculik revealed a bit more about the company's past and future and the challenges that remain to go from prototypes to fully fledged consumer vehicles - which the company plans to accomplish in 2017.
Vaculik and his co-founder Stefan Klein's dream of building flying cars wasn't simply a result of wishing to free their cars from the bonds of earth. As natives of what is the present-day Slovak Republic, they were motivated by a desire to escape the oppression of the then-communist government of Czechoslovakia. Of course, the Iron Curtain fell in that country 25 years ago, but the dream of driving and flying in the same vehicle remained.
AeroMobile is still searching for the right components that will keep the car light enough for flight, but sturdy enough to pass stringent governmental crash and safety requirements. Vaculik expects that AeroMobil to solve those problems in two years. Super lightweight and strong materials don't come cheap, by the way -- Vaculik estimates that the initial consumer version will cost at least a couple hundred thousand euros.
As for money and governmental approval, Vaculik assured the audience that AeroMobil has strong EU support, both in terms of getting the vehicle certified for operation under its regulatory scheme and getting public funding to help with R&D and production costs. Lastly, Vaculik said that, since his flying cars can utilize grass (as opposed to paved) landing strips and will need only 650 feet to take off and land, it'll be easy to carve them out next to highways and autobahns.
AeroMobil's first offering will necessarily be aimed at affluent enthusiasts. The company is taking a page from Tesla's playbook, first making a limited number of high-end "flying roadsters" to build the brand. These carbon fiber two-seaters will fit into existing regulatory schemes as light sport aircraft (meaning you need a special license to operate it), pack Garmin avionics, two-axis autopilot and have a range of around 430 miles.
