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Mark Hinchliffe·
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··5 Comments·1 min read

Are flying motorcycles the future?

BMW recently released a life-size flying motorcycle concept and now a Russian company has launched a drone “motorcycle”.

The BMW Hover Ride is just a model and the company says it doesn’t fly and they have no plans for a flying motorcycle.

However, we reckon BMW must be considering a flying motorcycle. After all, they already have developed a self-balancing motorcycle project, so they are obviously looking far into the future.

BMW Lego hover ride
BMW Hover Ride

Meanwhile, the Russian Hoversurf Scorpion-3 does fly with four propellors. But they don’t call it a motorcycle.

They describe it as a single-seat aircraft or human-carrying drone with a motorcycle seat.

The next step in their production is a crowdfunding campaign (or “crowdfinding” as it says on their website).

It’s not the first flying “motorcycle”, though.

Aero-X hovering bike hoverbike
Aero-X hovering “bike”

Back in 2014, Californian company Aerofex began testing its Aero-X Hoverbike, announcing they would have the vehicle available for sale in 2017, costing more than $90,000.

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The original design has been changed slightly so it is less like a motorcycle and more like a two-seater car and there is no word on when it will be available for sale.

Will the future be made up of flying motorcycles? It would certainly save on tyres!

Back in 1985, Back to the Future predicted flying passenger vehicles and a hoverboard for the year 2015.

Well, we now have “hoverboards” available, so the future may be closer than you think.

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5 Comments

  1. Flying motorcycles seem like a strange idea. Without seatbelts, there is only so much hanging on you can do with your thighs.
    As for flying cars, most car drivers have enough trouble keeping a lookout and driving to the rules in two dimensions. Three dimensions would be chaos although the collision repair industry could see a pot of gold in it for them.
    The only flying cars I would trust are those controlled by AI.

  2. The movies The Island and Return of the Jedi have the best hover bikes and if they ever get that good in my lifetime I’ll be selling a kidney to get one.

  3. It isn’t going to happen.
    Many people can barely drive a car properly, even fewer a motorcycle.
    If you own a helicopter now, you can’t just fly anywhere you like.
    The way the world uses fuel, wasting it on more uneconomical means of transport is criminal.
    Despite all of the above, mainenance and cost would be prohibitive. Simply running out of fuel would be disastrous.

    1. Problems are to be solved, not to be given up on. Human life is all about creativity and imagination, isn’t it? That’s how humanity has progressed. If they see a fatal problem, they’ll fix it. Besides, cars are already making casualties all over the world anyway because they run on the road, and most of them are not from running out of gas. If they flew, that would statistically reduce the number of accidents.

      However, I don’t know how we would drive without proper/visible lanes, and I know driving without lanes is impossible. So I’m sure there would need to be laws to enforce safety, such as to set your car to auto-run.

  4. Russian pilots are extremely gutsy. But even the gung ho guy on the Scorpion-3 maneuvered his “flying motorcycle” quite gingerly in the warehouse demo.

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