This is probably the most abstract car I have seen in recent years, no doubt about it.

Just a few days ago, an American startup called ALEF released a video, saying that its flying car Model A has successfully completed a test flight, and thus became the first flying car in the industry that can take off and land vertically.

Yes, you read that right, vertical take-off and landing.

In the video released by ALEF, they showed the current functions that Model A can achieve. For example, taking off from the spot and crossing a car in front, and when encountering a narrow road traffic jam, you can also take off directly and cross the obstacle car to continue driving.

And, very hardcore off-road capabilities.

But this is far from the upper limit of the capabilities designed for Model A.

In the function demonstration previously released by ALEF, Model A can not only achieve simple take-off and landing in place, but also fly upright like this by changing the angle of the crew cabin and cruise at high speed in the sky.

According to Jim Dukhovny, the boss of ALEF, Model A is expected to be mass-produced in the fourth quarter of this year, and the cooperating manufacturers are PUCARA AERO and MYC, which supply aviation-grade parts to Boeing and Airbus.

As for the price, 300,000 US dollars is about 2.17 million yuan, which is already at the same level as super sports cars such as Porsche 911, and has received more than 3,000 orders. From the smiling expression of their boss, it can be inferred that these orders are already a great success for ALEF.

I know that everyone must think that this car has a lot of slots.

Don't worry, I do too.

Based on the principle that the better the appearance, the better, I was full of questions when I saw this car for the first time: You sell me this thing for $300,000? It's not as good-looking as my undergraduate graduation project. . .

After carefully studying its materials, structure and functions, I am more convinced that even if this car is successfully mass-produced, it will most likely be a very abstract and weird product.

For example, a flying car should be a car in essence, right? It only needs to fly into the sky and cross obstacles when it encounters a traffic jam or a road is blocked. This is what the ALEF real-shot function demonstration does.

Then as a car, it needs to have the basic functions that a car should have, such as safe and stable driving, a certain degree of comfort, easy control, etc.

But our protagonist today, ALEF Model A, has almost castrated all of these functions in order to achieve the function of vertical take-off and landing.

For example, the mechanism that enables vertical take-off and landing is essentially the same as the four-rotor drone we play with, which is four large electric fans located at the four corners of the car body (performance parameters such as power and speed are currently unknown). By adjusting the speed difference between the left and right and front and rear sets of fans, the front and rear left and right angles can be adjusted to allow the car to turn in the air.

And because the four fans are located inside the car body, in order for them to drive enough air, ALEF boldly used a grid-like cover for Model A.

It has the outline of a car, but it also allows air to pass through freely.

And because the four fans are located inside the car body, in order for them to drive enough air, ALEF boldly used a grid-like cover for Model A.

It has the outline of a car, but it also allows air to pass through freely. It all looks very reasonable, right? But here comes the abstract part. It is estimated that in order to reduce the weight of the body and improve the efficiency of takeoff, ALEF not only uses carbon fiber as the material of the grid-shaped cover, but also the structure of the front and rear subframes is as simple as it can be: it is just a few steel pipes welded together.

The weight reduction effect is indeed obvious. In the media interview video, four ALEF employees can carry the Model A around.

But I ask, if this thing crashes, which part do we plan to use for collision energy absorption? It can't be the ultra-high-strength fan blades, right?

The control part is even more abstract. From the demonstration and real-shot videos, although the ALEF Model A has four wheels, no matter the size of the wheel or the width of the tire, it looks a bit too aggressive - are they really not bicycle tires?

And in the materials that have been released so far, I have not found any structure of the suspension, transmission or even steering system.

It can be said that the current stage of ALEF has only verified the feasibility of the function of vertical take-off and landing of the quadcopter + forward and backward movement in the air, and has not verified the possible interference between it and other driving functions. It is still a long way from actual road driving.

Then some friends must say, is it possible that this is a product that mainly promotes flight capabilities?

Don’t say, it’s possible, but not very likely.

After all, from the function demonstration video released by ALEF, the final form of Model A is a tilt-rotor aircraft similar to the Osprey transport aircraft. Not only can it take off and land vertically in narrow places, but it can also have good air maneuverability and cruising speed while keeping the cockpit position unchanged.

Compared with traditional quadcopters that have to tilt the fuselage to move forward and backward, the maneuverability, stability and comfort of ALEF Model A are indeed superior in theory.

But theory is theory, and practice is practice.

If you want the crew cabin to rotate according to their conception, from facing the front of the car to facing the roof, you need to design a two-axis rotation + stabilization mechanism like DJI’s Pocket lens. I won’t talk about how the structure is made and how reliable it is, but the weight increase is certain.

In order to carry more weight, it is necessary to configure a fan with higher power. As a pure electric product, where should the power battery that supports high power output be placed? How to solve the huge weight of the power battery pack?

Looking at the Model A in the promotional video, which is almost completely dismantled and only has four fans, I am really puzzled.

The only thing worth mentioning is perhaps the potential flight control logic design capability that ALEF may have. After all, when the Model A flies sideways, it is basically equivalent to a flying wire mesh, a turbulent hell, and there is no aerodynamics at all. It is extremely difficult to make this thing fly and cruise at high speed.

But if you ALEF have this level of flight control design capability, why don’t you just build a quadcopter like Xiaopeng Huitian! What kind of hybrid product are you making, right?

So, I think a netizen's evaluation of Model A is very correct:

"When I was a child, I had a kite that looked like a sailboat, but it was neither a good kite nor a fun sailboat."

As for this so-called industry's first vertical take-off and landing flying car, in my opinion, there are still too many questions to be answered as an aircraft, and of course it is not a qualified car.

What's more annoying is that this company, which looks so abstract, has made smooth progress in financing in recent years. It raised $3 million in the seed round in 2017, and raised more than a dozen rounds from 2018 to 2024. From the establishment of the brand to today, in the past ten years, a total of more than $44 million has been raised.

Professional team, heaven and earth, and mass production is coming soon!