Flying cars are soaring from pages of science fiction to reality

Well, the flying car is no longer a sci-fi fantasy, but becoming a reality. They are currently in production and can be delivered to customers within the next year or two. It's starting to feel like an episode of The Jetsons. Action News investigative reporter Chad Fridelli spoke with one of the co-founders of one of the leading manufacturers of flying cars and has more on this week's Driving into the Future. The company is called Olive Aeronautics, founded in 2015. It's at the forefront of flying cars with over 3,500 pre-orders of its flying cars. Here's a look at the first model. This is called the Olive Model A Ultralight, a vehicle that can drive and fly as seen in this testing video, where the vehicle elevates and goes airborne over another car. The video has over 2 billion views worldwide. A little under a month ago, we started building the first car to be delivered to the actual customer. Olive Aeronautics co-founder Jim Duchovny says his company and technology has two priorities, safety and regulatory compliance. Duchovny says this vehicle will be able to elevate thousands of feet for just 20. At this point, at least, the cabin is not pressurized. So you cannot go up to the levels where you need a pressurized cabin. He says the current Model A Ultralight goes for $300,000, but he expects in about a decade the price will drop to roughly $30,000. He calls it an EV car first, an aircraft second, with a range of 200 miles on the road and 110 in the air. It will fall under existing Ultralight Aircraft Federal Aviation Administration regulations, which means no certification is required currently. There are rules where you can take off and land. So if you're imagining a scenario that you're going to drive on the freeway, I'm not sure which freeway is closer to you, take off, fly and then land on the freeway, that's not going to happen. Duchovny says learning to operate the vehicle will only take a few hours, but also require to learn FAA regulations. You have to read the sectional map. You have to understand the Alpha Bravo airspace and where you can fly, where you cannot fly. The first models are expected to hit the roadways in either Silicon Valley or Hong Kong and will test real world conditions under very controlled testing. Now there are all sorts of questions and issues with these vehicles, including regulatory approvals with municipalities and so forth. We'll address those next week's episode of Driving into the Future. I'm Chad Perdelli, Channel 6, Good Afternoon.