Will one of these flying cars finally change the game in 2023?

The BMW-engined AirCar was actually issued with an ‘official Certificate of Airworthiness’ by the Slovak Transport Authority in early 2022 having completed 70 hours of flight testing and over 200 takeoffs and landings. Is this the future right here?

If you’ve been to literally any motor show or motoring event in the past decade or so, we reckon you’ve probably seen the PAL-V Liberty hanging around. The Dutch company announced in 2018 that the Liberty was in production and in February 2021 it was fully certified by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. We’re told first customer deliveries will take place in 2024. What this space. Or the space above…

We’ve covered AeroMobil a fair bit in the past and even paid a visit to its HQ just outside Bratislava when its 4.0 concept was unveiled. In 2018 renders of version 5.0 of its flying car were unveiled, but then in 2021 an advert popped up that said we could drive and fly the two-seat 4.0 you see here in 2023. Rest assured, we’re happy to be the guinea pigs if required.

Are there any manufacturers left in the world that haven’t been bought out by Geely? Terrafugia was founded in Massachusetts in 2006 with a concept called the Transition, and it was in 2017 that Geely came knocking. Before that, the firm had shown off the wild-looking 200mph (in the air) TF-X that you see here, but things have been suspiciously quiet for a while now…

Remember when Porsche and Boeing announced in 2019 that they were looking to “explore the premium urban air mobility market and the extension of urban traffic into airspace”? Yeah, us neither really. News like that tends not to stick in our heads, which is probably for the best. Anyway, if you were picking two existing companies that you’d like to collaborate on a flying car, we’d wager these two would be high up the list.

Another traditionally ground-focused firm looking to the skies is Toyota, having invested £300m into flying hexacopter taxi startup Joby Aviation back in early 2020. At the time we were told that the Santa Cruz-based company would roll out its air-based transport solution in 2023, so let’s see if that comes to pass, shall we?

Okay, so the lack of wheels might mean Renault’s AIR4 doesn’t exactly qualify as a flying car, but it is technically a Renault 4 that can take to the sky. Hence, flying car. The drone-style thing was created to celebrate the 4’s 60th birthday in 2021, and there are actual videos of it hovering above the ground on YouTube. Just don’t expect it on a driveway near you anytime soon…