Airspeeder - 8 things you need to know about the race series for flying cars... that aren't cars

2. They’re faster than a Ferrari

Made mostly of carbonfibre, each Airspeeder weighs just 130kg without a pilot, which is just a sixth of a Formula 1 car, and with 320kw (the leccy equivalent of 429bhp) at the pilot’s disposal they’ll hit a top speed of 125mph. That’s a good chunk slower than a current Red Bull or Mercedes, but with a thrust-to-weight ratio that would embarrass an F-15 Strike Eagle fighter jet (3.5 compared to 1.2), they’ll pull up to 5G through the tightest turns.

The Mk3’s 0-62mph time of 2.8 seconds also means it’s faster off the mark than a Lamborghini Huracan Evo or Ferrari 812 Superfast – but unlike those old-fashioned Tarmac-dwellers an Airspeeder isn’t constrained by something as mundane as gravity...

3. They don’t need roads

Airspeeders can fly as high as 500 metres but that would make it hard to see what was going on from terra firma, so races will take place between 10 and 40 metres off the ground.

Besides, Pearson sees it as more of an armchair sport than a spectator one: “There will be invited guests and a small audience on site with the crew, but we’re mainly designing this for streaming so that everyone gets to enjoy what we're doing,” he explains.

That also means they’re not too constrained by access or facilities when it comes to choosing locations for the events, so there’s not going to be a Gatwick Grand Prix. Pearson’s plan is for races to take place on multiple continents over land, sea and mountains, sometimes all within the same race.

4. They’ll go racing this year

Airspeeder has just completed its latest successful test flights on the salt flats of South Australia, but everything is building towards the first three races, which are due to take place on augmented reality sky-tracks before the end of the year.

This unmanned EXA series is all about finding out what happens when you fly these things at close quarters, so each one will have a telerobotic avatar in the cockpit that will act as the eyes for the pilots on the ground. These ‘Aviators’ are also packed with sensors that will tell the Airspeeder team how human pilots are likely to react to the extreme G forces that they’ll experience.

“There are things you can do with a multicopter that you can't do with a plane or helicopter,” says Pearson. “Understanding what that’s really going to be like is something that you can only really get when it's real racing.”

5. And there’s a waiting list to fly them

Volunteering to be one of the first people to fly an Airspeeder takes serious guts, but Pearson says he’s not short of applicants, with plane and helicopter pilots, and even “some motorsports personalities” keen to be added to a long waiting list.

“We get a lot of applications but we've also got amazing ex-military test pilots as part of our team,” he says. “They're not just excited about flying the vehicle, they're also equipped to give us the feedback that we need on how these things work.”

There’s no doubting the potential danger involved, but each Airspeeder is equipped with 22 different sensors that are designed to prevent mid-air collisions. Radar, Lidar, machine vision and 5G connectivity create a kind of forcefield around each one, ensuring they can get close, but not too close, with the first manned races expected to take place in 2022.

6. There will be pit stops

Without tyres to change you might think there would be no need for pit stops, but current battery technology can’t keep a Mk3 in the air for more than about 15 minutes at a time, so Airspeeder’s team of motorsport experts have been working on getting the time it takes to change a battery down to just 20 seconds. That’ll make 30- or 45-minute races possible.

“If it wasn't necessary it would have been a great thing to add,” says Pearson. “Pit stops are a fantastic part of the drama and strategy of motorsport. It's something that other electric sports have thought about doing but haven't been able to perfect. I think it's going to be an awesome thing to watch.”

7. There are big brains behind the scenes 

Pearson made his fortune as co-founder of an online business management tool called Honcho, but he says he’s always been fascinated by aerospace. “I vowed to myself to put something in space and build a flying car,” says the 34-year-old, who’s also COO of Fleet, a company that’s just about to launch its sixth satellite into orbit.

Pearson’s Fleet co-founder is rocket scientist Flavia Tata Nardini, and he’s enlisted similarly impressive brains in order to get his second ambition off the ground.

The Airspeeder team includes people who have worked for McLaren, Brabham, Jaguar Land Rover, and Rolls-Royce, while project lead Brett Hill was previously a flight dynamics specialist on Boeing’s 747 programme.