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The concept of a flying car is not new—inventors have been trying to add wings to wheeled motor vehicles for decades, with only limited success.
Jim Dukhovny, founder of Alef Aeronautics, hopes to change that equation. His California-based firm has come up with a novel approach to moving terrestrial vehicles into the skies and has attracted at least one prominent venture capitalist.
Alef's Model A, which is just emerging from a seven-year gestation period, looks less like the flying cars in old movies and more like Bruce Willis’ flying taxi in the 1997 film “The Fifth Element.”
The unusual appearance—which features a body that flips on its side to become the wing after lift-off—is just one aspect that attracted Tim Draper, an early investor in Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc and SpaceX whose Draper Associates Fund V has backed Alef with $3 million in seed money....