Alef Flying Car Nears Reality After 11 Years: CBS Rides Along as First Deliveries Target Next Year

For years, if you wanted to catch a flying car, your best bet was Saturday morning cartoons. Now Alef, a Bay Area startup, says its vehicle is close to reality after 11 years of work. CBS News Bay Area got a rare chance to join one of the handful of people who have flown it so far. It can do everything that our cars can do and vertically take off from anywhere, said Jim Dukhovny, the Alef chief executive.

The car body is a mesh you can see right through, which lets air reach the propellers hidden inside. The whole vehicle is light enough to qualify as an ultralight, which means that, at least for now, no pilot license is required. There are no doors, just a seat, a steering wheel and a flight stick, with every control switched off except two buttons. The prototype battery lasts about 15 minutes in the air. A later version is designed to drive 200 miles or fly about 110 miles.

The cost is about 300,000 dollars, and the company says there is already plenty of interest, with more than 3,500 deposits so far. It plans to deliver its first car as early as next year. Dukhovny sees just one real rival. Last month, Elon Musk unveiled a Tesla Roadster that flips and hops on blasts of compressed air. During the unveiling, the Tesla car flew with no one inside. Musk said the demo ran autonomously.