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Posted on 09/28/2026 4:18:02 AM PDT by Libloather
If you have ever been stuck in traffic wishing your car could sprout wings, Samson Sky has been working on something pretty close. Its Switchblade flying car can drive out of your garage and take you to a nearby airport. Once there, the wings come out, the tail extends and the vehicle becomes an airplane. You heard right, an airplane. After landing, everything folds back inside so you can drive the rest of the way.
That idea has been around for years. What makes Switchblade worth another look right now is that Samson says it has secured an $80 million investment from Dubai-based Matin Group. Samson plans to use the funding to help move the project toward U.S. production. The company still needs another $20 million to fully fund its current production plan. That new backing gets the Switchblade closer. But what really caught my attention is how much Samson has changed since we first watched this flying car take off.
This flying sports car makes its wings disappear
The latest Switchblade design looks much more like a car when you are using it on the road. Samson says the wings, tail and propeller are now fully enclosed inside the vehicle during driving mode. That is a major change from the earlier design that completed its first flight in November 2023. When you reach an airport, the wings extend and the tail moves into position for flight. Samson says the transformation from driving mode to flying mode takes about three minutes.
After you land, the process reverses. The flight hardware folds back inside the body before you continue the trip by road.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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We are living in the future
I’ll tell you how I know
I read it in the paper
Fifteen years ago
We’re all driving rocket ships
And talking with our minds
And wearing turquoise jewelry
And standing in soup lines
We are standing in soup lines
I hope those wings and empennage are stowed during driving... Looks more like a roadable aircraft than a “flying car” in that photo.
I think I see where the wings are supposed to go, and the extension for the tail probably slides in, but where do the vertical stabilizers and electric motors go when in car mode?
The tail on the prototype is much more compact.
And how big is the engine driving the electric motors?
Bruh. It’s in the clip above.
“Samson says the wings, tail and propeller are now fully enclosed inside the vehicle during diving mode.”
Notice it has 3 wheels that’s not an accident its mandatory.
Why?
3 wheels makes it a autocycle by law and not subject to full car fed safety laws. Which would make it much to heavy to fly.
Depending on its final mass this could be in the Sport Light Aircraft licence bracket it will never be in the licence free ultralight bracket so a PPL or sport light FAA cert is mandatory in US airspace. No joe six pack will not be flying this off the street notice the you have to drive to an airport part that’s mandatory as well the FAA will have your nuts if you tried to take off from a road no way no how nope nope nope. From a private field 1000 feet or more from habitable structures or congested areas maybe do that more than once and the FAA will demand you get a airstrip permit with full site surveys.
Again this is a fully licenced aircraft not the flying car of lore.
Axial flux motors hit 20hp per pound now some higher. Much more horsepower per lb than any ICE engines ever made other than top fuel dragsters who melt their piston tops every run. Gas turbines hit 6-10hp per lb.
My guess is a 300hp aircraft type rated engine flat 6 driving a very light mass axial flux generator A 15lb disk 24” in diameter is the right sized axial flux generator for 300hp.
That HVDC sends 800V to the twin prop drive motors again in the 20hp/lb range.
21st century SiC electronics makes this all possible at 400-800V you can move 1000+hp in normal sized copper braided cables the model S plaid does 1300+ hp using standard cables.
The bonus is your wheel drive axial flux motors are tiny and inside the wheel hubs themselves probably 25kw each plenty for road use on a light 3 wheel frame. 80mph plus speeds for sure.
It sure has.
This design should be a double switch blade the wings obviously switch blade aft open they should switch pun intended to a canard design with the forward canards flipping open the opposite ways from the wings this gives a balanced 4 point lift design and then no tail out the rear a simple single flip up rudder and you can duct prop the fans right into the rear on each side of the flip up rudder thenergy the only things that need to fold are your four switch blades and a rudder than slides down and forwards or aft and down to clean up for road travel.
Don’t forget Popular Science and Boy’s Life magazines.
Flying cars, backyard rocketships, $50 Jeeps, and a myriad of other “great deals”!
This was 80 years ago!
I’m no aeronautical engineer, but I did play one on TV.
It takes horsepower or, lift surface, to fly, usually both. This model appears to have insufficient amounts of each.
I’ll wait ‘til there’s at least five years of success, before I’ll consider stepping into one of these.
I agree. Way too much wing loading. Not enough lift.
Oddly enough, I can read... So yeah... “bruh”.
Tricycle wheel arrangement SUCKS for ground ops.
FAA regs are a joke and unConstitutional. The FAA should be entirely privatized and run like the IEEE.
As I drove a Ford Pinto at the time, I was saddened that the “Flying Pinto” didn’t succeed.
The entire empennage unbolted from the car and left at the airport or trailered home.
More than a few who could drop $200K on a vehicle can barely manage two dimensions of travel. How do you think they will handle three?
Exactly!
The article has a picture of an earlier version airborne.
Musk/Tesla’s FSD becomes FSF?
A number of things about this car/plane make me suck wind through my teeth.
It’s a kit plane. FAA won’t certify Frankenstein planes like this. It’s basically a “swing-wing” airplane they’re expecting amateurs to build.
It’s obvious the wings are tiny, which means high wing loading (65% higher than a Cessna 172 or Rutan Long-EZE), which means it’ll be touchy to fly. It’ll also have a higher sink rate when it’s dead stick.
It also needs 1100 feet of runway for take-off, which is grim for a plane that weighs the same as a Piper Cub but has twice the horsepower, but that’s one of the consequences of the high wing loading. And that’s not necessarily a problem, it just limits your options.
They prototyped it with wings that were smaller BY ALMOST A THIRD, which means they originally were banking on significantly higher wing loading.
The prototype used a ducted fan for propulsion but it didn’t work out so they switched to the twin pusher fans.
That makes two major design elements they had to make significant alterations to from the prototype. So maybe they should invest in a better simulation software to help keep their ambition in check.
It uses a 3-clynder water-cooled “SC-200” 190-hp engine that is “Samson” branded so it apparently is of their own design and/or manufacture. And it’s supposed to cost only half what a comparable general aviation engine would. That it’s so much cheaper to build than the engines that are the product of more than a century of aircraft industry R&D isn’t exactly confidence-inspiring.
Neither is the fact that I can’t find any specs on the engine; no displacement, no rpms, etc. One search result said the engine was “modified” and “rebadged” but didn’t say what from.
The engine drives generators that produce electric current to power the road wheels and the propulsion fans, so they avoided a half ton lithium ion battery. The fact that there are two fans means a more gradual descent if one fan fails, but the reciprocating gasoline engine is always going to be the more failure-prone, and if the engine quits you’ll be flying a brick.
But that also begs the question, has the rudder been designed with sufficient authority to assure positive directional control with the asymmetric thrust of a failed fan.
Flying cars necessarily are always going to be a bag full of compromises, and the big question is always going to be, is this the one that has compromises that the people who buy airplanes can live with. For the Samson, my Magic 8 Ball says, “Outlook not so good.”
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