The Carplane GmbH Carplane is a German

roadable aircraft A flying car or roadable aircraft is a type of vehicle which can function both as a road vehicle and as an aircraft. As used here, this includes vehicles which drive as motorcycles when on the road. The term "flying car" is also sometimes u ...

under development by Carplane GmbH of

Braunschweig Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( , from Low German ''Brunswiek'' , Braunschweig dialect: ''Bronswiek'') is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the ...

. The aircraft is intended to be supplied complete and ready-to-fly.Tacke, Willi; Marino Boric; et al: ''World Directory of Light Aviation 2015-16'', page 37. Flying Pages Europe SARL, 2015. The nearly complete prototype was first shown at the

AERO Friedrichshafen AERO Friedrichshafen is a trade show dedicated to European general aviation. It is held yearly in April on the shores of Lake Constance at the exhibition center of Friedrichshafen, Germany right next to Friedrichshafen Airport Friedrichshaf ...

show in 2015.

Design and development

The design is intended to be

certified Certification is the provision by an independent body of written assurance (a certificate) that the product, service or system in question meets specific requirements. It is the formal attestation or confirmation of certain characteristics of a ...

as an EASA CS-VLA Very Light Aircraft under

EASA The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is an agency of the European Union (EU) with responsibility for civil aviation safety. It carries out certification, regulation and standardisation and also performs investigation and monitori ...

airworthiness rules. It may also be put in the US light-sport aircraft category under a weight exemption. The Carplane features a folding cantilever

high-wing A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing co ...

, two individual single-seat enclosed cockpits in

side-by-side configuration Tandem, or in tandem, is an arrangement in which a team of machines, animals or people are lined up one behind another, all facing in the same direction. The original use of the term in English was in ''tandem harness'', which is used for two ...

in separate

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraf ...

s with individual bubble canopies. It has fixed quadracycle

landing gear Landing gear is the undercarriage of an aircraft or spacecraft that is used for takeoff or landing. For aircraft it is generally needed for both. It was also formerly called ''alighting gear'' by some manufacturers, such as the Glenn L. Martin ...

with wheels and a single engine in pusher configuration. The twin fuselage design is intended to produce a vehicle that will drive as well as any compact car, while allowing space for the wings to fold and to store between the two fuselages, thus improving road aerodynamics and lower

centre of gravity In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space (sometimes referred to as the balance point) is the unique point where the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zero. This is the point to which a force ma ...

. The aircraft is made from composites. Its span wing has an area of and can be extended in 20 seconds from road mode to aircraft mode. The standard engine used is a LSA-Engines LSA850-130 petrol two-cylinder four-stroke powerplant. Funding for the development is being provided by the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

and the German state of

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

Specifications

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://carplane.com/ Carplane 2010s German ultralight aircraft Single-engined pusher aircraft Roadable aircraft