Posted on 07/05/2024 7:50:45 AM PDT by Red Badger
A road-going helicopter that handles like a go-kart and drives at highway speeds - Pegasus
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It drives at highway speeds, handles like a go-kart, transforms from drive to fly mode in three seconds, takes off vertically, and can fly for up to three hours on a hybrid powertrain. This remarkable road-going rotorcraft is now headed to the USA. Based in Melbourne, Australia – but clearly also with a presence in China – Pegasus is now moving its head office and production facilities to Las Vegas. The company says it's been working on its flying car design since 2009. Indeed, the project looks well advanced, and the company's naked early prototypes, first flown around 2016, have long since given way to the handsome, fully-enclosed Pegasus E, which made its debut in 2021.
Effectively, it's a small, single-seat helicopter with automatic quick-fold rotor blades, with a bare-bones open-wheel vehicle chassis grafted on, using carbon fiber rods. It's not precisely clear exactly where the electric part of the hybrid drive system comes in, but the combustion power appears to come from a lightweight, buzzy "Pegasus 800" two-stroke, making around 160 horsepower.
Before we get any further, you have to see this frankly insane "only in China" urban flight test footage, shot in what appears to be a deserted industrial estate.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
If it is light enough to fly it has =zero= crash safety.
Those rotor blades make it a unsafe at any time.
Nothing new. Both Popular Science and Popular Mechanics have articles about these going back sixty years ago.
Two-stroke? Never pass emissions.
Used to have a FIAT X1/9.
That really drove like a go-kart!..................
So, if stuck in traffic, you can fly over the road jam? Sounds tempting, but if there’s another carcopter with the same idea, near you, there will be an even worse traffic jam from the collision.
Since these are disposable, no insurance is needed. No license. No tags. No insurance. Mine will be sprayed with a mirror finish to camouflage in the blue skies or the trees. Can’t catch me if you can’t see me.
I don’t think they apply to aviation, do they?
They called this a hybrid, so the ground part must be electric..............
Maybe. I’d guess that if the thing is to be driven on roads, it’ll have to be registered as a vehicle, and that means emissions testing in a lot of places.
If it’s not to be driven on roads, though, it’s not really a “flying car” IMO.
Better be REAL quick-folding if I'm in the car in the adjacent lane when this comes in for a landing. Good grief.
Yeah, thinking they should have called it Icarus instead of Pegasus.
NO WAY I would drive something with wheels that small on the highway. (And I drive an Ariel Atom on the highway)
BTW, the video looks like CGI.
It will be hell on pedestrains.
The fun will begin when one of these things enters Class B airspace over LAX.
Or DC.......................
If any single part of it comes from China, I wouldn’t trust it.
Upward opening doors on a helicopter?
What could possibly go wrong?
Decapitation by helicopter blade, the new road hazard.
Can’t wait for the traffic warning signs: “Watch for burning falling wreckage.”
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