[Pierre]

Every year in April in Monaco, there's an auto show called Top Marques which features mostly luxury brands and supercar makers.
This year, they have invited the slovakian company Aeromobil which makes... a flying car.
Don't laugh, their 3rd generation prototype has gathered a lot of attention in the auto world, and it seems to work well, at least enough to achieve certification from the Slovak federation of ultra-light flying.
They plan to start selling it in 2 years, for a price close to 1M€.
http://www.aeromobil.com/

 

[LonePalmBJ]

Aeromobil had a bad weekend:
http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Aeromobil-Flying-Car-Crashed-Pilot-OK-224052-1.html

 

[SD Karma]

I have always wanted a flying car but the Moller flying car has been my favorite to date. One day ......

 

[shrowell]

Aeromobil had a bad weekend:
http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Aeromobil-Flying-Car-Crashed-Pilot-OK-224052-1.html

This vehicle has been my laptop wallpaper for the past 6-9 months; what a dream. The video on their website is astonishing. Really sorry to hear about the accident but being able to deploy a parachute successfully at 900 feet is very impressive.

Of course, it's a godsend that only licensed pilots will be able to 'drive' these types of cars

Thank you for sharing!

 

[Pierre]

I got news of the incident.
I understand the aeromobil started spiraling down during a test flight, the pilot lost control and opened the parachute.
Well, can't really blame them, it's still a prototype with only few hours of flight on the clock.
Stefan Klein, 54, the pilot and also the CTO of Aeromobil, went uninjured.

What's interesting here is the ballistic parachute.
Some people might think Klein ejected and opened his safety parachute, but in fact the parachute he used is a Ballistic Recovery System (BRS) that's supposed to save the whole aircraft, so he did stay in the aeromobil the whole time until crash/landing.
I have to admit the system did a pretty good job:

I got really interested in ballistic parachutes after watching FF7.
I guess you've all seen the sequence where they drop cars from a C-130 cargo.
It is totally real.
Incredible how safely they managed to land the cars.
Here's a short behind-the-scenes video:

and an article giving some more details :
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/04/secrets-behind-the-three-most-amazing-stunts-in-furious-7

Those parachutes have been invented by Boris Popov in 1980 and are patented.
You can read all about them here.
On their website, they state it costs between $3,000 and $12,500 for the hardware, so it's not even out of reach for an individual.

As a final note, Aeromobil's official company video, a must-see:

 

[Stefan]

Cool information. Thanks for sharing.

How many of these parachutes do we need for our Karma?
Maybe we can save some money on the parachutes if we could get rid of our Battery packs... Maybe by blasting them away ?!

 

[Pierre]

You want to turn the Karma into a flying car Stefan?