Is the Sky-Hopper the ‘Flying Car’ the World Has Been Waiting For?

Peter Dobber has successfully tested his version of the affordable, sustainable 'flying car'. But will it take off for the rest of us?
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Sky-Hopper, a company that aims to provide an affordable, efficient manned multicopter to the public, is Peter Dobber’s passion project. Having graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and spending most of his life in the IT field, Dobber’s programming abilities and computer engineering skills helped lay the perfect foundation for his actual ambition: “Developing the first affordable eco-friendly aircraft for everyday use, that is safe, affordable and as easy to use as a mainstream car and is so small it fits a standard parking space,” as Sky-Hopper’s website tells us.

Of course, the Sky-Hopper team isn’t as well funded or resource-laden as Google and their version of the ‘flying car’—but they’ve been making substantial progress regardless. Last September, they finally reached the most important stage of this endeavor: a successful, manned test-flight. This was a huge leap forward from their proof-of-concept test in July of 2015. Take a look at the latest flight for yourself, courtesy of Peter Dobber’s personal YouTube account.

Pretty impressive, right? Reading about these kinds of efforts, learning about the people involved and then actually seeing the results in action really makes one think that we’re not too far away now from the future we’ve all envisioned as kids. Who knows? This may end up being one of the most significant bullet points in the future Wikipedia entry of the history of flying cars. 

Or not. We’ll just have to wait and see. At the very least, they seem to be way ahead of Toyota’s efforts in the flying car game, and those folks got corporate money behind them.