סטרטאפ אמריקני מבטיח: נספק את המכונית המעופפת הראשונה בעולם

And next up, the dream of flying cars may finally be taking shape. Not in a sci-fi movie, but in Silicon Valley. Yeah, this thing is for real now. A California startup says it's ready to deliver the world's first street legal flying car. Aleph Aeronautics founder and CEO Jimmy Duchovny spoke with the Epoch Times about turning fiction into flight. Here's that. For Jim Duchovny, the dream of flight began long before Aleph Aeronautics took off. Duchovny says he and Aleph's co-founders grew up reading science fiction. The works of Jule Verne, Isaac Asimov, and Ray Bradbury loomed large in their minds. But they were also inspired by some very real science. Duchovny says all their fathers were engineers or scientists. So the inspiration is actually taking a science fiction, taking something which is fictional and made up and marrying it with the hard science. Duchovny launched Aleph Aeronautics in 2015, the same year Marty McFly and Doc Brown visit in Back to the Future Part 2, flying their famous DeLorean. Duchovny calls that coincidence fitting, saying 2015 was the year that multiple technologies finally caught up with the dream. Around 2015, multiple technology matured without any of them that would not be possible. First and foremost, it's a battery technology, electric battery technology, right? Rapid prototyping, composite materials, especially software. It's a lot of drone technologies, microprocessing. The company's first model, called the Model A, looks like a sleek electric car, but hides eight propellers for vertical lift. Duchovny says that makes it different from so-called flying taxis. It's automotive, uses automotive infrastructure, uses automotive business model. So it is a car which can also fly. It's not an airplane with wheels which can drive. Duchovny says safety is at the heart of Aleph's design. The vehicle includes multiple redundant systems, autonomous features and even a full body parachute. To us, safety is not number one. To our safety is number zero. The only reason we're going to be successful or not successful is safety. If everything goes right, Aleph plans to start production on its first consumer flying cars by late 2025 or early 2026. Prices will start around $300,000, though Duchovny says later models could drop below $30,000 as production scales up. We're not making the cars for the rich, otherwise it doesn't solve the initial problem. The problem of traffic on the ground, it's not going to be solved. Only if people who can afford $300,000 cars would be in the air. Reservations are open for $150. You can join the waitlist or pay more for priority delivery. Duchovny says early buyers help fund the technology that could save everyone time. I don't know how much you and I or anybody in this room is going to live, I don't know, 80 years, 100 years or so. One year of that life you're going to spend in traffic, standing there. If we can give it back to people, that's going to impact people's lives. Aleph Aeronautics is still seeking investors as it moves toward production. But if the company stays on track, the world's first flying car could lift off in the not-too-distant future.