“New Sleek-Looking Body Style for Samson Sky Switchblade” 

After the first flight of the Switch­blade fly­ing car last Novem­ber, Sam­son Sky has been busy with its pro­duc­tion engi­neer­ing, reports a press release.

The com­pa­ny announced recent­ly “its efforts have yield­ed tremen­dous results”, and is now pub­licly shar­ing an enhanced body design that will lead to pro­duc­tion vehi­cles. This new sleek-look­ing body style is already gain­ing a pos­i­tive feed­back from com­pa­ny sup­port­ers. 

Sam Bous­field, Sam­son Sky CEO and design­er of the Switch­blade, enthused,  “The new sim­pler and much eas­i­er to build design improves per­for­mance and short­ens the path­way to pro­duc­tion by trans­fer­ring much of what worked well in the test vehi­cle that flew, into this lat­est stream­lined design.” He added, “Every­thing we do is with a mind­set of how we’re going to pro­duce thou­sands of Switch­blades, to meet the incred­i­ble demand we have.”

Sam­son says the exist­ing Reser­va­tions rep­re­sent a poten­tial sales val­ue of over USD450 mil­lion. They have Hold­ers from 57 coun­tries, includ­ing all 50 U.S states. The com­pa­ny reports it has val­i­dat­ed var­i­ous key para­me­ters dur­ing flight tri­als and the new design ele­vates the Switch­blade to the next lev­el.

Bous­field con­tin­ued,  “There are always changes and mod­i­fi­ca­tions based on things learned from flight test­ing and we’ve used these to great­ly improve our orig­i­nal design, while keep­ing the sig­na­ture swing­ing wings that tuck away com­plete­ly inside the vehi­cle, when dri­ving.” This new sleek design shows var­i­ous refine­ments includ­ing fold­ing side wing mir­rors, nose radi­a­tor inlet, per­for­mance radi­a­tor out­let, head­lights and tail­lights. 

The Switch­blade in Fly-Mode

The com­pa­ny’s web­site describes the Switch­blade “as a high-per­for­mance vehi­cle, both on the road and in the air.” The test vehi­cle which flew in 2023 achieved its tar­get of 125 mph dur­ing ground test­ing, and com­pa­ny offi­cials say they made these design changes to achieve the fly­ing cruise speed tar­get. 

Accord­ing to Bous­field, wind tun­nel test­ing in May showed that the new look with sleek­er body and thruster pro­pellers will allow Sam­son to meet its tar­get of 160mph fly­ing cruise speed. Bous­field point­ed out, “The final styling end­ed up reduc­ing drag by an addi­tion­al 2 per­cent, giv­ing us the green light for pro­duc­tion.” 

The release states, “Sam­son is build­ing three pro­duc­tion vehi­cles over the next 18 months to be used for inten­sive test­ing on every aspect of the vehi­cle, both fly­ing and dri­ving, pri­or to ramp­ing up pro­duc­tion.” 

The Switch­blade seats two, side-by-side, with room for trav­el bags, and flies up to 500 miles on a sin­gle tank of pre­mi­um auto gas. It is also street legal.

Sam Bouls­field

The own­er can park the Switch­blade in a garage, then dri­ve it to a near­by air­port. Once there, the wings swing out and the tail extends in under three min­utes. After fly­ing to an air­port near­est to the intend­ed des­ti­na­tion, at the touch of a but­ton, the wings and tail are then safe­ly stowed and pro­tect­ed, and the plane trans­forms back to a road vehi­cle, where it can be dri­ven legal­ly to the journey’s end.

For more infor­ma­tion 

https://www.samsonsky.com

(Images: Sam­son Sky)

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