It makes sense that the company has switched things up to an eight-prop system for the latest design – this adds a bunch of redundancy in case something fails. It’s much bulkier, though, and as a result the new design looks less like a Minority Report hypercar and more like a luxury electric rally-raider with a massive box on top, as you can see in the render video below.

Why not? Well, if weight is the enemy of flight, it’s the mortal nemesis of electric VTOL flight – particularly for straight-up wingless multicopter designs like this, which need to burn energy constantly to stay airborne. Lithium batteries are heavy enough that even single-purpose manned multicopter air taxis all suffer from heavily restricted endurance and range figures.

Street-legal electric cars are typically very heavy in and of themselves; they need to pass crash tests. They need separate road-going powertrains, suspension, brakes, big wheels, windscreen wipers and cup holders, along with great big heavy battery packs. AeroHT’s practical little air taxi weighs around 560 kg (1,235 lb) with nobody sitting in it, and still only gets around 35 minutes out of a battery. The flying car’s weight could end up being more than four times higher, and it still only flies two people.