California startup Alef Aeronautics has shown off a remarkably fresh take on the street-legal eVTOL flying car in its 2025 Model A. This wild design debuts a 2-axis tilting cabin, and a horizontal cruise flight mode unlike anything we’ve seen before.
Running entirely on batteries, the Model A uses four hub motors to get around on the street, in a hyper-minimalist frame that looks almost insubstantial from above. In the middle is a round, glassed-over one- or two-seat cabin that’s completely isolated from the external bodywork. Indeed, if you want to hop inside, you need to open separate doors in the bodywork and the cabin itself.
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The upward-facing parts of the bodywork are made as a lightweight 3D mesh, and if you guessed there are lift rotors beneath for VTOL purposes, you’d be right. As a drone-style airframe, the Model A runs an octacopter setup, with eight propellers, each with maybe a two-foot (61 cm) diameter, and the mesh skin allows air to flow smoothly through the car.
Read more: New Atlas
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