Parajet International is taking pre-orders for its flying car, called Skyrunner.
The car, which will reportedly sell for $139,000 was featured at an airshow in England this week and the makers want to generate enough orders that they can
put the flying car into production, Bloomberg News reported.
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The car can be used as an off-road vehicle or a flying machine, and is the third generation of one that flew and drove from Britain to Africa in 2009.
“We have a lot of interest from the leisure sector, but we’re just evaluating potential uses,” Tom Prideaux-Brune, managing director for the Dorset, England-based company, told Bloomberg. Those uses could include search and rescue operations and military use.
The flying car uses paraglider wing technology. “In the unlikely event of engine or wing failure, the SkyRunner simply floats softly to the ground on its paraglider, or a ballistic reserve chute can be deployed,” the
product website says.
The single-passenger flying car was flown on the trip to Africa by its inventor, Gilo Cardozo, who
told BBC News, “Flying over the desert in a flying car is absolutely surreal. It's an extraordinary experience. In the right environment, when you've learnt to fly, it's very safe."
Cardozo also said he had dreamed of a flying car since he was a child.
"The inspiration came from realizing we can drive and we can fly, so why can't we do both? The problem all along has been the wing technology, which we think we've cracked with the Skycar," he told the BBC. The Skycar was the first prototype of the Skyrunner.
Bloomberg said the company’s primary product is a powered paraglider that uses an engine and propeller that the pilot wears in a backpack.
Other companies are also working to bring flying cars to market, including Terrafugia, a Massachusetts-based company that already sells the Transition, a fixed-wing plane that also operates as a car on the road.
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