What the Tech: Flying “car” unveiled at CES 2024
By JAMIE TUCKER Consumer Technology Reporter
How long would it take you to drive to work if you didn’t have to deal with traffic? How long would it take if you could go from point A to point B as the crow flies?
For over a decade, people have been talking about a flying car and the ability to soar over commuter traffic and routes that require you to go out of the way. Finally at CES, an honest-to-goodness personal flying vehicle is not just on the show floor but for sale!
The Helix Pivotal isn’t technically a car but it is flying and it’s taking to the skies a lot sooner than you might think.
“The vehicle is a single seat aircraft. All electric,” explains Pivotal’s Greg Lary standing in front of a Helix vehicle. “The aircraft only weights 348 pounds and has a pilot capacity of 220 pounds.”
“You can hover on a dime, spin 360, you can fly 60 miles an hour looking down at the birds taking off underneath you,” said Kristina Menton who has flown the Helix several times. She and other Helix fliers do not need a pilot’s license. The vehicle falls under the FAA’s description of an ultralight vehicle, therefore it cannot be flown over congested areas. Menton believes that could change someday.
“The FAA is making regulations to hopefully allow these to be more prevalent in the future,” said Menton. “You don’t need a runway, you can take off from your backyard, a soccer field, or a farmer’s field. So it really opens up a lot of opportunities that weren’t available before.”
“The inventor of the aircraft invented Memory Foam. He retired but created this aircraft. Today is the first day it’s available to the general public”.
And if you’re wondering, there is a parachute for the vehicle that rests just beyond the cockpit and before the nose. So if something goes wrong it will gently float to the ground and land safely.
Orders for the Helix are now open on the company’s website and deliveries are expected to begin in June.
The starting price of the first Helix is $190,000.
