Flying Sports Car Reaches 1,500 Reservations
Samson Sky’s Switchblade has customers in 45 countries.
Samson Sky’s flying sports car – the Switchblade – has just hit two new milestones. The first is reaching Reservation Position 1,500. Per the company, that translates to an average of over four reservations per week, over the last 26 months. Additionally, Samson recently added the 45th country to their global roster of where reservation holders reside.
“We’re excited to see the international interest continuing to grow. When you look at the flying car arena, no one has even come close to our numbers,” said founder and CEO Sam Bousfield. “While demand is still highest in the U.S., where we have customers in all 50 states, Samson is making the Switchblade available with left-drive or right-drive controls to satisfy people wherever they live.”
NASA recently released a white paper indicating that Regional Air Mobility (inter-city trips of up to 500 miles) would become the next great advancement in transportation, well ahead of Urban Air Mobility (citywide air taxi) which has a much longer development timeline. Vehicles such as the Switchblade and the Dutch PAL-V will enable people to park their flying cars in their garage and drive them to the nearest airport, which in the U.S. is typically within 15 minutes of where most people live.
The Switchblade vehicle transitions from road to air in roughly three minutes, after which drivers are free to fly to the airport nearest your destination and drive the last few miles, all in the same vehicle – shaving up to 65% off travel time.
The Switchblade flying sports car is classified as a motorcycle by the U.S. Department of Transportation, but the Samson Sky team likes to call it a flying sports car because of its high performance. The engine is a supercharged, lightweight 200 hp liquid-cooled 3-cylinder that is capable of 0-60 in 6.5 seconds and a top speed of 125-plus mph. In the air it is designed to cruise at 160 mph, with a top speed of up to 190 mph and a range of 500 miles. Using Road & Track’s slalom testing parameters, the Ground Test Vehicle outperformed everything in its wheelbase per Road & Track’s historical database.
