Alef to launch drivable eVTOL in 2025

With planned first deliv­er­ies in Q4 of 2025, Alef Aero­nau­tics has intro­duced the Alef Mod­el A fly­ing car with street dri­ving and ver­ti­cal take-off that fits with­in exist­ing urban infra­struc­ture for dri­ving and park­ing. The first Alef fly­ing car is avail­able for pre-sale to con­sumers for $300K, with $150 reg­u­lar queue or $1,500 pri­or­i­ty queue deposit.

The Mod­el A has a dri­ving range of 200 miles and a flight range of 110 miles. It has a dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem, no exposed pro­pellers, exten­sive soft­ware flight sta­bil­i­sa­tion and safe­ty sys­tem, elevon sta­bil­i­sa­tion sys­tem, and all wheel dri­ving. 

Key safe­ty com­po­nents include triple- to octu­ple-redun­dan­cy of all key com­po­nents, real-time thou­sand point diag­nos­tics, pre-flight reject start diag­nos­tics, obsta­cle detec­tion and avoid­ance among oth­ers.

The Alef found­ing team of Con­stan­tine Kisly, Pavel Markin, Oleg Petrov and Jim Dukhovny has over 70 years of expe­ri­ence in engi­neer­ing and tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment and has been work­ing on the Alef fly­ing car since 2015.

It earned ear­ly sup­port from dis­tin­guished investors and indus­try vet­er­ans, led by Tim Drap­er who was one of the first ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists to invest in Tes­la, Dr Antho­ny Teth­er of Ford Aero­space and for­mer head of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NBA star Luis Sco­la, Bugat­ti design­er Hirash Raza­ghi and oth­ers.

Ale­f’s CEO Jim Dukhovny said: “The Alef Mod­el is a mod­ern solu­tion for both urban and rur­al trans­porta­tion needs in the 21st cen­tu­ry because it is the fastest and most con­ve­nient trans­port ever cre­at­ed from the point of ori­gin to the final des­ti­na­tion. 

“By enabling con­sumers to choose dri­ving or fly­ing mode, the Alef fly­ing car allows the opti­mal path depend­ing on road con­di­tions, weath­er and infra­struc­ture.”

Alef has been test dri­ving and test fly­ing the Alef full-size pro­to­type since 2019. With addi­tion­al mod­els in devel­op­ment, Alef is work­ing towards a four-per­son sedan, Alef Mod­el Z sched­uled for intro­duc­tion in 2035 priced at $35K. It will be capa­ble of fly­ing 300+ miles with a dri­ving range of 220+ miles.