“The world’s first electric flying car races will be the most exciting and progressive motorsport on the planet” says founder of Alauda Aeronautics, Matt Pearson, in a statement.

The world’s first flying electric race car has been unveiled-and it looks like it came straight out of a science fiction movie.

The Airspeeder Mk3 is a remotely-operated flying race car that its manufacturer, Alauda, states will hit the racetrack this year and pave the way for a manned model next year. This model boasts claims to have the turning capabilities of land-dwelling performance vehicles and has a top speed of 120 kph (75mph).
Alauda states their advancements enable the Mk3 to take the tight corners that F1 cars can manage, all while owning the sky. The Mk3 uses 8 individual spinning rotors in order to propel itself through the sky; along with a stack of two on each of the vehicle’s corners in an “octocopter X formation”. Following the previous Mk2, the powertrain has been greatly boosted to a 95% increase in power while weighing just at 100kg.

In order to prevent crashes and to keep the vehicles in the right direction, a host of technologies are placed on the vehicle to monitor its environment. LiDAR, a remote sensing technology which utilises lasers to measure distances between objects and radar are used to create a type of “virtual force field” throughout the craft. The effectiveness of this technology in keeping the vehicles safe remains to be seen in future races.

Plenty believe that electric vehicles are the future of green transport; but there is much work to be done before the production of electric vehicles truly becomes sustainable. In the meantime, advances such as these will have huge impacts on the reduction of global emissions.

Production is underway for a whole grid of Airspeeders. And this race car is set to debut in a remote-controlled race in Australia very soon.