The BiPod is a developmental flying car developed by Scaled Composites. It is Burt Rutan's final design prior to his retirement.

Development

The Bipod was originally designed to be a electric propulsion testbed, later evolving into the flying car concept. The vehicle is for market evaluation and testing only.

Design

The BiPod uses twin fuselages with tandem wheels joined together by a wing surface. The wings, stabilizers and tail tips are removable for road operations. The left cockpit is configured for road operations (i.e. it is driven as a car from the left-hand station), the right cockpit is configured for air operations (i.e. it is flown from the right-hand station). The wingspan of nearly 32 feet (9.7 m) is reduced to 7.9 feet (2.4 m) when the wings are removed (they can be carried between the two fuselage sections during road operation). Thus the vehicle can be parked in a regular-sized garage stall when the wings and tail surfaces have been removed.

Propulsion

Each fuselage section has a 450cc gasoline engine, which drives an electric generator. The generators power 15kW electric motors; two such motors drive the rear wheels for land use, and four such motors drive four propellers (two on the horizontal stabilizer and two on the wings). Although not installed to date (July 2011), the testbed configuration will eventually incorporate rechargeable lithium batteries for additional power during takeoff or for extra climb performance. In addition, as of the first flight the propellers and propeller drive motors had not been installed; the "flights" consisted of brief hops above a runway after the drive wheels had been used to accelerate the vehicle to 80 mph (130 kph).

Operational history

The prototype was built in a four-month period. Test hops have been performed with the prototype at Mojave Air and Space Port using propulsion from the wheels. The vehicle has been tested up to 80 mph on land.

Specifications (Scaled Composites Model 367 BiPod)