Push-button flying car now authorized by both FAA and DMV

The meme that we call the flying car has been about forever and actual realization has always been .a rube goldberg construct and neither possible because of technical conflicts.

what is potentially possible will be a ground hugging gravity vehicle that interacts with the road, yet floats like what we were shown on Star Wars.

Today though we do have six axis rotational props tied into aetodynamic spars.  this can lift and move at some elevation depending on power..  This is not ever a car.  It is a flying craft whose configuration has real safety potential.

 By that, I mean it should be possible to experience prop failure, drop to ground effect and then safely land.  This is important for a personal vehicle.  

what is then possible is a vehicle able to make a safe speed of around sixty miles per hour without been over the top in aerodynamic design.  All this matters because lift off and point to point travel inside a safe landing envelope will easily be supported just for time efficiency..  

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Push-button flying car now authorized by both FAA and DMV

By Loz Blain

July 23, 2023

https://newatlas.com/aircraft/aska-a5-dmv-street-legal/#gallery:6

Fully unfolded into aircraft mode, the Aska A5 is less of a visual calamity than it is on the road

Aska

When most folk think about flying cars, we think of machines that seamlessly convert from street to air mode, that can take off and land vertically, and that can cruise in the air and on the highway. The US$789,000 Aska A5 promises to do it all.

The ambition wrapped up in this project is breathtaking. It's not an easily-registered three-wheeler, it's a four-seat car the size of an SUV, capable of traveling at highway speeds. It'll look completely ridiculous doing so, but it's capable.

Not only does it convert to an eVTOL aircraft automagically, at the touch of a button, it's a transitioning eVTOL aircraft with tilt-capable propellers and wide wings for cruising, offering a crazy 250-mile (400-km) flight range at speeds up to 150 mph (240 km/h), thanks to a range-extended hybrid powertrain. Oh, and it glides so well as a winged aircraft that you can take off and land on a runway – even a short runway – if you've got one handy.

It's bonkers. It's hubristic lunacy. It's impossible. It's also already prototyped.

ASKA is currently working with both the NHTSA and FAA to get its A5 eVTOL fully certified for driving and flying

Aska hasn't shown any footage yet, but the company says it's already "conducting flight testing," after receiving a Certificate of Authorization and Special Airworthiness Certification from the FAA. As we pointed out a few weeks ago, this is not a full type certificate allowing the commercial sale of this aircraft, it's more of a limited, one-off green light to fly the prototype.

And now the company's announced it's "the world's first flying car to receive authorization to drive on public roads from the United States (US) Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)."

Aska says its prototype A5 has "successfully conducted more than 300 miles [480 km] of road testing around Silicon Valley with a DMV number plate."

“Being the first electric flying car developer to be successfully conducting driving tests on local roads in California validates our efforts to develop an eVTOL that is roadable and with an emphasis on safety,” says Maki Kaplinsky, Chair & COO/Cofounder, in a press release.

This is one family car you certainly don't want getting dinged up in a parking lot

Aska

As with the FAA airworthiness certificate, this is a (probably conditional) one-off, rather than an endorsement that this company's ready to start manufacturing street-legal cars. But it's a one-off that's required Aska to take this crazy-looking contraption down to a DMV office, and have a presumably extremely bewildered office drone inspect the prototype and give it the thumbs-up. That would've been a fun day.

Aska has already taken more than 60 pre-orders, representing deposits on $50 million in pre-sales. According to the company's website, the A5 is "on target for 2026 commercialization, subject to certification approvals."

Subject indeed! As we've pointed out every time we've seen this audacious project, there's a good reason most "flying cars" are three-wheeler trikes that can sneak through street approvals disguised as motorcycles. If you want to sell a car that folk can just go out and drive on the road, it needs to meet automotive safety standards.

That means it needs to satisfy crash testing requirements. You have to start talking about things like crumple zones, airbags, child seat tethers, and all the other things automakers have to build into their cars. Meeting these requirements is laborious and expensive, and from an aerospace perspective also results in a vehicles that is probably way too heavy.

Driving the A5 around at an airport

Aska

There are also reasons why there are very few other personal eVTOL companies working on a winged, transitioning aircraft: it makes the project much more aerodynamically and mechanically complex, and introduces potential points of failure. And that's without including the fact that these wings all fold in to let you drive the car on the street.

Perhaps Aska is planning to sell this thing as a kit build, in which case owners could potentially go and register them as home-built cars with the DMV and kit-built aircraft with the FAA. But it doesn't seem that way; the company's next target is G1 status with the FAA, a stepping stone on the path to full FAA type certification.

So all in all, we're quite bewildered. Not just by the outrageous idea of this thing, but by the considerable progress Aska has demonstrated. Check out a video below.