Kitty Hawk 2.0: Flying car may hit market as early as year-end

Flying cars may not be a new concept – various prototypes have been tested in recent years – but a company named Kitty Hawk, backed by Google founder Larry Page, has come out with its first flying vehicle that it says may hit retail stores by the end of this year.

The company's president, Sebastian Thrun, sent out a tweet on Monday quoting a New York Times article and a link that shows the vehicle prototype in action.

Recently, an aerospace engineer working for Kitty Hawk piloted the flying car above a scenic lake about 100 miles north of San Francisco. The flying car, if you could call it a ''car'', was an open-seated, 220-pound contraption with room for one person, powered by eight battery-powered propellers that howled as loudly as a speedboat.

'Kitty Hawk', for those who don't remember their history, was the name of the first ever heavier-than-air flying machine, built by the Wright brothers in 1904.

The tech industry, The New York Times points out, is fond of disrupting things, and lately the automakers have been a big target. It reported "Cars that use artificial intelligence to drive themselves, for example, have been in development for a few years and can be spotted on roads in a number of US cities. And now, coming onto the radar screen, are flying machines that do not exactly look like your father's Buick with wings."

More than a dozen start-ups backed by deep-pocketed industry figures like Larry Page, along with big aerospace firms like Airbus, the ride-hailing company Uber and even the government of Dubai, are taking on the dream of the flying car.

The approaches by the different companies vary and the realization of their competing visions seems far in the future, but they have one thing in common: a belief that one day regular people should be able to fly their own vehicles around town.

The Kitty Hawk flying car, which looks straight out of a Star Wars movie, can travel at 25mph in its prototype stage but will look different when it comes out.

The prototype looks and feels a lot like a flying motorcycle, a profile of the vehicle by the NYT report says. You mount the seat and lean forward, just like you would on a bike.

The controls are built into a set of handlebars and work similar to buttons and joysticks on a video game controller. It takes off and lands vertically, like a helicopter. But unlike a helicopter, the Flyer is 100 per cent electric and powered by eight rotors.

According to the Kitty Hawk site, the new vehicle is ''safe, tested and legal to operate in the US'', as long as it is flown in ''uncongested areas.'' Also, one doesn't need a pilot's license to fly it, and Kitty Hawk claims you can learn how to drive it in just a few hours.

The vehicle is currently designed to fly over water only. The company hasn't said how much a vehicle will cost, but is offering an early $2000 (£1560) discount for people who are willing to cough up $100 (£78) now. That early payment will get you both the discount and some test flights with the Kitty Hawk, NYT reported.

There are challenges, of course, with both the technology and government regulations. Perhaps the biggest hurdle will be convincing the public that the whole idea isn't crazy.

Kitty Hawk has attracted intense interest because of Page and its chief executive, Sebastian Thrun, an influential technologist and self-driving car pioneer who is the founding director of Google's X lab.

Page declined a request for an interview but said in a statement, ''We've all had dreams of flying effortlessly. I'm excited that one day very soon I'll be able to climb onto my Kitty Hawk Flyer for a quick and easy personal flight.''

During his recent test flight, Cameron Robertson, the aerospace engineer, used two joysticklike controls to swing the vehicle back and forth above Clear Lake, sliding on the air as a Formula One car might shimmy through a racecourse. The flight, just 15 feet above the water, circled over the lake about 20 or 30 yards from shore, and after about five minutes Robertson steered back to a floating landing pad at the end of a dock.

The Kitty Hawk Flyer is one of several prototypes the start-up, based in Mountain View, California, is designing. The company hopes to create an audience of enthusiasts and hobbyists.

More than a dozen companies - from large to small - are now in various stages of creating flying vehicles.