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the Personal Air and Land Vehicle, or PAL-V for short, has just proved it can handle the skies as well as the highway, both at up to 180 kilometres (112 miles) per hour, its Dutch developers said Tuesday.
The PAL-V is a gyrocopter that can fly as far as 500 kilometres at an altitude of up to 4,000 feet (1,200 metres).
When it lands, it tucks away its rotor-blades and turns into a road-legal three-wheeled vehicle with a range of 1,200 kilometres.
“In future, you will be able to drive from home to the airport, take off, land and then drive to your destination in one go,” said Robert Dingemanse, chief executive of the company, also called PAL-V.
In development since 2008, the first commercial models of the arrow-shaped PAL-V are expected to go on sale in 2014 at 250,000-300,000 euros (AUD$320,500-$384,600), Dingemanse said.
“The successful maiden flight of the PAL-V protoype was conducted at a Dutch Air Force base last month,” added the head of the company, based in Raamsdonksveer near the eastern city of Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
“It will revolutionise the era of personal air travel,” said Jacco Hoekstra, dean of the aerospace faculty at Delft Technical University, which with the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory cooperated on the project.
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