Samson Sky Appoints Italian Designer for Switchblade Flying Car Interior

Sam­son Sky has appoint­ed Ital­ian auto­mo­tive design­er Lui­gi Mem­o­la and his firm, EPTA Design, to devel­op the inte­ri­or of its Switch­blade road­able air­craft as the US com­pa­ny con­tin­ues prepa­ra­tions for pro­duc­tion.

The work will cov­er the two-seat vehicle’s dri­ving and flight con­fig­u­ra­tions, includ­ing the dash­board, cen­tre con­sole, seats, trim and oth­er inte­ri­or details. The design must accom­mo­date the dif­fer­ent require­ments of road and flight oper­a­tions, with lay­outs suit­able for both left-hand-dri­ve and right-hand-dri­ve mar­kets.

Based in Turin, Italy, EPTA Design spe­cialis­es in auto­mo­tive and trans­porta­tion design, includ­ing high-per­for­mance vehi­cles and con­cept devel­op­ment. Mem­o­la, the firm’s founder and head of design, has more than two decades of expe­ri­ence in the sec­tor.

Sam­son Sky will pro­vide the tech­ni­cal require­ments for the con­trols and instru­men­ta­tion, while EPTA focus­es on the interior’s styling and lay­out. The Switch­blade will fea­ture an instru­ment dis­play designed to change auto­mat­i­cal­ly between dri­ving and flight modes, pre­sent­ing infor­ma­tion rel­e­vant to each oper­at­ing con­fig­u­ra­tion.

The Switch­blade is a hybrid-elec­tric road­able air­craft designed to com­bine road trav­el with fixed-wing flight. It is intend­ed to be dri­ven on pub­lic roads to an air­port, con­vert­ed to flight con­fig­u­ra­tion and flown to an air­port clos­er to the des­ti­na­tion, before return­ing to road use.

Its wings and tail are enclosed with­in the vehi­cle when in dri­ving mode. Sam­son Sky says the trans­for­ma­tion between road and flight con­fig­u­ra­tions takes approx­i­mate­ly three min­utes. The air­craft com­plet­ed its first flight in Novem­ber 2023.

The com­pa­ny is tar­get­ing region­al jour­neys of around 200 to 500 miles, with the vehi­cle designed to car­ry two occu­pants and lug­gage. It uses pre­mi­um auto­mo­tive petrol, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny.

Sam­son Sky said inte­ri­or devel­op­ment fol­lows an $80 mil­lion invest­ment secured for its first US pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty. The com­pa­ny also reports near­ly 3,000 orders from cus­tomers in more than 50 coun­tries, although it has not pro­vid­ed a pro­duc­tion start date in the announce­ment.

The appoint­ment marks anoth­er devel­op­ment step for the Switch­blade, but the vehicle’s path to com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion will depend on the com­ple­tion of devel­op­ment and applic­a­ble cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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