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Samson Sky Switchblade: “Reservations For Flying Car Soar To Over 100 Per Month”

The main­stream media (MSM) can be quizzi­cal over the notion of fly­ing cars. Apart from con­fus­ing them with eVTOLs, the fly­ing car, a vehi­cle which can both legal­ly trav­el on roads and fly in the sky, is couched between The Jet­sons and a Heath Robin­son whim­si­cal car­toon-like con­trap­tion.

What the MSM, per­haps, do not ful­ly under­stand is the public’s appetite for such a vehi­cle, how­ev­er unlike­ly it is to pass, at present, all the strin­gent air reg­u­la­tions. Per­haps, it is seen more as a fan­ci­ful dream than an actu­al real­i­ty? The abil­i­ty to park it in a garage, then dri­ve it down a neigh­bour­hood road before tak­ing off, is more the machi­na­tions of the film Chit­ty Chit­ty Bang Bang.

Sam Bous­field

Even so, U.S‑based, Sam­son Sky, the cre­ators of the Switch­blade fly­ing car, is undaunt­ed by the chal­lenges that lie ahead and announced this week reser­va­tions for its vehi­cle has soared to over 100 per month or more than 600 dur­ing the last 6 months alone.

Sam Bous­field, Sam­son Sky CEO and design­er of the Switch­blade, says this is the largest increase in the company’s his­to­ry. He com­ment­ed, “Over the years, we’ve cer­tain­ly had big surges in Reser­va­tions dur­ing major avi­a­tion events where we were exhibit­ing the Switch­blade, but this increase is more than we’ve ever seen.”

The cost of a Switch­blade is USD150,000. Advance pay­ment will be avail­able after suc­cess­ful test flights. A dri­ver’s and pilot’s license is required to oper­ate the vehi­cle.

What intrigues Bous­field is that a new trend is emerg­ing. For more than 50 per­cent of these Reser­va­tions are from non-pilots. Due to this increas­ing lev­el of inter­est, Sam­son Sky says it is expand­ing its plans to include an effec­tive in-house flight train­ing pro­gram util­is­ing a world-class sim­u­la­tor.

Bous­field con­tin­ued, “As of May 2022, reser­va­tions received were at an impres­sive 1634, but due to a grow­ing inter­est, this fig­ure has now reached close to 2,250, where reser­va­tions are com­ing from 54 dif­fer­ent coun­tries and all 50 U.S States.” 

The pres­sure placed on the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (FAA) to allow fly­ing cars to become a future real­i­ty, sure­ly must grow, where safe­ty remains para­mount.

Mean­while, after 14 years of devel­op­ment, the Switch­blade described as “a fast, street-legal three-wheel­er that con­verts at the touch of a but­ton into a 200-mph (322-km/h) air­plane”, has been approved for air­wor­thi­ness by the FAA. Tri­als have been ongo­ing since the Sum­mer.

While the vehi­cle is clas­si­fied present­ly as a motor­cy­cle by the U.S. Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion, the Sam­son Sky team refer to it as a fly­ing sports car because of its high per­for­mance. The engine is a super­charged, light­weight 190 hp liq­uid-cooled 3‑cylinder with Sky­brid Tech­nol­o­gy, with a top speed of over 125 mph. In the air, the vehi­cle is designed to cruise at 160 mph with a top speed of up to 200 mph and a range of 500 miles.

The Switch­blade is named after the knife-like way its wings swing out from beneath its two-seat cab­in when it’s time to fly. The tail, too, swings out from where it’s stowed behind the large push­er prop, then unfolds into a T‑shape. Sam­son Sky says the entire push-but­ton con­ver­sion from street-legal trike to air­craft takes less than three min­utes.

Tak­ing off from a local neigh­bour­hood road is unfea­si­ble, so an own­er must dri­ve to a local airstrip and take off from there. The vehi­cle requires a 1,100-ft run­way for take­off and a short­er 700 ft for land­ing. It’ll eas­i­ly fit into a reg­u­lar garage once the flight gear is fold­ed away, stand­ing just 5.1 ft high and occu­py­ing a 16.8 x 6‑ft foot­print not far off that of a fam­i­ly sedan.

While Car­ac­ta­cus Potts amused, “And Chit­ty flew high over the moun­tains back to Eng­land, every­body safe and sound…” what is the actu­al real­i­ty for fly­ing cars?

The Klein Vision Air­Car was offi­cial­ly grant­ed cer­tifi­cate of air­wor­thi­ness by the Slo­vak Air Trans­porta­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) back in Jan­u­ary after more than 70 hours of test flights includ­ing 200 take­offs and land­ings. The video released at the time is high­ly impres­sive (watch above).

This sure­ly offers great hope to all fly­ing car man­u­fac­tur­ers.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.samsonsky.com/

(images: Sam­son Sky)

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