industry news
Subscribe Now

Alef flying car receives limited FAA Special Airworthiness Certification

  • Alef unveiled its “Model A” flying car in October 2022 and has since received strong pre-orders from individuals and companies
  • Alef’s flying car is both road drivable on public roads and has vertical takeoff and landing capabilities
  • Alef is taking deposits for pre-orders for its “Model A” car for $300,000 on it’s website

SANTA MATEO, Calif.June 27, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Alef Aeronautics, a sustainable mobility company that is designing and developing a flying car, announced today that it received a Special Airworthiness Certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, marking the first time a vehicle of this nature has received legal approval to fly from the US Government.

The FAA is actively working on its policies for electrical vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles, as well as governing interactions between eVTOLs and ground infrastructure. Alef’s Special Airworthiness Certificate therefore limits the locations and purpose for which Alef is permitted to fly.

Alef emerged from stealth in October 2022 with the unveil of its full-sized sports car model along with two working full-size technology demonstrator cars. It has since received strong pre-orders from both individuals and companies. Alef’s flying car is 100% electric, drivable on public roads and has vertical takeoff and landing capabilities. The car will carry one or two occupants.

“We’re excited to receive this certification from the FAA. It allows us to move closer to bringing people an environmentally friendly and faster commute, saving individuals and companies hours each week. This is a one small step for planes, one giant step for cars,” said Jim Dukhovny, CEO of Alef.

About Alef: Alef, based in San Mateo, CA, is a sustainable electric transportation company designing and developing a road-legal passenger car capable of achieving vertical takeoff and forward flight. Alef was founded in 2015 by Jim DukhovnyKonstantin KislyPavel MarkinOleg Petrov in Palo Alto, California. Alef’s investors include Draper Associates, Impact VC, Draper B1, Bronco Ventures, Strong VC, Louis ScolaJim BoettcherJim HurdJason Gorrie, Chinney, Knollwood Advisory and others. Alef recently announced the opening of a new fundraising round. More information can be found at https://alef.aero.

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
Dec 8, 2023
Read the technical brief to learn about Mixed-Order Mesh Curving using Cadence Fidelity Pointwise. When performing numerical simulations on complex systems, discretization schemes are necessary for the governing equations and geometry. In computational fluid dynamics (CFD) si...
Dec 7, 2023
Explore the different memory technologies at the heart of AI SoC memory architecture and learn about the advantages of SRAM, ReRAM, MRAM, and beyond.The post The Importance of Memory Architecture for AI SoCs appeared first on Chip Design....
Nov 6, 2023
Suffice it to say that everyone and everything in these images was shot in-camera underwater, and that the results truly are haunting....

featured video

Dramatically Improve PPA and Productivity with Generative AI

Sponsored by Cadence Design Systems

Discover how you can quickly optimize flows for many blocks concurrently and use that knowledge for your next design. The Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer is a revolutionary, AI-driven, automated approach to chip design flow optimization. Block engineers specify the design goals, and generative AI features within Cadence Cerebrus Explorer will intelligently optimize the design to meet the power, performance, and area (PPA) goals in a completely automated way.

Click here for more information

featured paper

Power and Performance Analysis of FIR Filters and FFTs on Intel Agilex® 7 FPGAs

Sponsored by Intel

Learn about the Future of Intel Programmable Solutions Group at intel.com/leap. The power and performance efficiency of digital signal processing (DSP) workloads play a significant role in the evolution of modern-day technology. Compare benchmarks of finite impulse response (FIR) filters and fast Fourier transform (FFT) designs on Intel Agilex® 7 FPGAs to publicly available results from AMD’s Versal* FPGAs and artificial intelligence engines.

Read more

featured chalk talk

Accessing AWS IoT Services Securely over LTE-M
Developing a connected IoT design from scratch can be a complicated endeavor. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton, Harald Kröll from u-blox, Lucio Di Jasio from AWS, and Rob Reynolds from SparkFun Electronics examine the details of the AWS IoT ExpressLink SARA-R5 starter kit. They explore the common IoT development design challenges that AWS IoT ExpressLink SARA-R5 starter kit is looking to solve and how you can get started using this kit in your next connected IoT design.
Oct 26, 2023
5,369 views