Eight flying cars* coming your way from BMW, Hyundai, Honda and more

BMW’s Designworks division had a hand in developing ‘Skai’, a four-passenger electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) craft. Hydrogen-powered, with six electric motors on each rotor and a top speed of 118mph, creator Alaka’i reckons it’ll go for 400 miles and cut travel time to minutes – easily done when the congestion is down there and not upwards, right?

There’s also a three-layer safety system, so Skai can fly if one motor glitches, land safely if two go into limp mode, or deploy its own parachute for an immediate landing if all else fails. Good to know.

Honda’s developing a hybrid eVTOL using its Formula One regen know-how and aero engine, the latter the same one powering the HondaJet. The electrified gas-turbine power unit features 10 rotors and is capable of around 250 miles. One day, Honda reckons it could cut an inter-city journey from five hours by car to just over 2.5 hours by air. Works for us.

Hyundai’s Supernal SA-2, which debuted at CES 2024, features eight all-tilting rotors ready to lift or thrust at any given moment, a V-tail designed to cruise at 120mph for trips up to 40 miles, and a claim that it’ll be as quiet as a dishwasher. Presumably true when the kitchen help isn’t singing. Hyundai design chief Luc Donckerwolke says it's "the true representation of ‘auto meets aero’".

In 2019, Porsche collaborated with Boeing to create an unnamed, super cool concept. The hope was to create a two-passenger fuselage – either autonomously piloted, or able to go into manual mode if one passenger was suitably certified – constructed using carbon-fibre and shaped like Batman's weekend jet.

It could also feature a fast-charging battery pack, bendable wings and tilt-action on the ducted fans so they could lift or thrust. There were murmurings of a prototype back then, but six years on, no update has been suitably forthcoming. Maybe Batman's having too much fun in it...

Stellantis has given a mighty wedge of cash ($150m) to Archer Aviation, in return for exclusive rights to manufacture Midnight, its all-electric eVTOL. Archer says the Midnight is focussed on taking folks around cities rather than longer distances. As such, this aircraft's battery only goes for about 100 miles. We're also told production – at a rate of two Midnights per month – is to begin imminently, with a two-a-day target by 2030.

SkyDrive is Suzuki's flying car project: an all-electric craft with 12 motor-rotor units, space for two passengers and a pilot and a range of about 25 miles. It'll debut in Osaka later this year, with a top speed of 62mph. That's double the speed of the SkyDrive SD-01 uncrewed demonstrator launched over a decade ago. By 2035? Who knows.

Joby Aviation's eVTOL – with the best part of a billion quid from Toyota to pass regulatory testing and build the thing – travels at airspeeds of up to 205mph and has already completed three of the five stages of certification needed by the folks that police the skies. With the 200mph achievement unlocked, Joby's next ambition is to reach 10,000ft, and says Stage Four certification is half-done. Could quieter, zero-emission air travel be closer than we think?

The Xpeng AeroHT craft is a human-carrying drone. Showing its futuristic tech stripes at CES 2025, it comes with its very own Land Aircraft Carrier. It's also very close to getting regulatory approval in China, where folks will be able to drive their vehicle to a 'Flying Camp' then deploy, board and jaunt about in unrestricted airspace. Xpeng hopes to create more than 200 camps with their own landing platforms, which is just as well because pre-orders for the combo are around 3,000 at last check.