ASKA A5 Flying Car achieves hovered thrust while tethered

A full-scale pro­to­type of the ASKA A5 fly­ing car suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed its first air­borne tests, lift­ing from a Cal­i­for­nia air­field with hov­ered thrust while the vehi­cle was teth­ered to the ground.

The size of an SUV in dri­ve mode, the four-seater ASKA A5 is claimed to be the world’s first fly­ing car that can trav­el by road and air with ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (VTOL) and short take­off and land­ing (STOL) capa­bil­i­ties, with a 250 mile flight range.

ASKA A5 is capa­ble of VTOL from a heli­pad or ver­ti­port, but can also per­form an ener­gy-effi­cient STOL from a run­way using the in-wheel motors, thrust from the props and aero­dy­nam­ic wings.

In June, the A5 achieved Cer­tifi­cate of Autho­riza­tion (COA) and Spe­cial Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by the FAA and received autho­ri­sa­tion to dri­ve on pub­lic roads from the Depart­ment of Motor Vehi­cles (DMV), hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly con­duct­ed more than 300 miles of road test­ing around Sil­i­con Val­ley.

Maki Kaplin­sky, ASKA COO and co-founder, com­ment­ed: “A5 suc­cess­ful­ly lift­ed off and main­tained thrust hov­er sta­tus. We are close­ly work­ing with the FAA to ensure con­tin­ued excel­lent progress with our flight test­ing. The next phase will be work­ing toward tran­si­tion into cruise and STOL.”

ASKA A5 makes use of exist­ing infra­struc­ture, such as park­ing, charg­ing sta­tions, air­fields, heli­pads and run­ways. It fits in stan­dard park­ing spaces, can be charged at home and EV charg­ing sta­tions, and the range exten­der engine runs on pre­mi­um gaso­line from exist­ing auto­mo­tive gas sta­tions.

Basic spec­i­fi­ca­tions:

• Dual hybrid ener­gy sup­ply: ASKA is hybrid with bat­ter­ies and a range exten­der engine that charges the bat­ter­ies in-flight. Uses pre­mi­um gaso­line avail­able from today’s gas sta­tions
• Large Aero­dy­nam­ic wings, opti­mised for safe land­ing with abil­i­ty to glide
• Six inde­pen­dent motor sys­tems for flight
• Suf­fi­cient reserve flight time to meet FAA safe­ty require­ment
• Bal­lis­tic para­chute
• 4‑seater (1 pilot and 3 pas­sen­gers)
• Capa­ble of Ver­ti­cal Take­off and Land­ing (VTOL) from heli­pads and Short Take­off and Land­ing (STOL) from run­ways
• Max flight range 250 miles
• Air­speed up to 150mph

In July, ASKA claimed its A5 is the world’s first fly­ing car to start the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process with the FAA.

ASKA A5 pro­to­type earns FAA Spe­cial Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion