If you don’t believe the future is right at your doorstep, look no further than the ridiculous innovations that are happening with flying cars. In the drone market explosion, manufacturers have taken away the power of quadcopters and built flying vehicles, both aerial and remotely powered. One such vehicle is the Alauda Airspeeder MK3XA and it is as great as it sounds. Now, under the auspices of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority of Australia, Alauda Aeronautics has successfully tested their aircraft car on a race track, and believes they will be racing by the end of the year.
The Alauda Airspeeder MK3XAA took part in its first full test flight for the first time and was announced by Alauda last week. It joins the XA series of Airspeeder, which run electric planes specifically designed to explode around a track – what they would expect – a global audience. According to Alauda, a team of professional race crews operating the craft from the remote cockpit, some of whom draw on their background sports, Alauda said. They now hope that with a season of three racing events planned throughout 2021, they will make the dream of racing electric planes to become a reality.
Alauda is so serious about the new spectator game that the races will include vehicles involving Formula 1-style pitstops, in-house engineers to provide vehicle service, and finally human pilots. Stated Alauda founder Matt Pearson in a statement, “We are proud to make history by launching the world’s first racing series to fly electric cars.” The Airspeeder series is the closest thing to a real airplane. Powered by four powerful rotors, the Airspeeder is technically an EVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) vehicle capable of launching directly upwards and subsequently climbing to a maximum altitude of 500 meters (1,640 feet).
This is certainly annoying, giving Stone-age cars a speed race for their money, capable of accelerating from 0 to 62 miles per hour (99.8 kilometers per hour) in just 2.6 seconds – just a fraction of the back of an F1 car. Strengthening this level of power brings a disadvantage and it only takes 10-15 minutes of battery life to go down and must come before replacement. The company is planning pitstops to increase the number of races, yet expect events to be shorter and higher-octane than longer races.
