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Since the first-ever Jetsons Air Games event, which organizer The Jetsons described as “Formula One in the Sky,” flying car racing is no longer the stuff of science fiction.
Footage from the 2025 UP.Summit, a private event for transportation industry investors in mid-October, shows four Jetson One jets hovering about 20 feet above the ground, weaving through cones and speeding over grasslands and tarmac.
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Jetson One is an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. That is, it uses electrical power to hover, take off, and land vertically like a helicopter. But once in the air, it flies like an airplane, with a maximum flight time of 20 minutes.
According to Jetson specifications, the vehicle weighs about 120 pounds (54 kilograms), can climb up to 1,500 feet (457 meters) above the ground, and can fly up to 63 miles per hour (102 kilometers per hour).
Nevertheless, flying a personal aircraft involves some significant risks. The Jetsons claim to have addressed these with a radar-sensing automatic landing system, the ability to fly safely even with the loss of one of eight motors, and a suborbital parachute designed to open very quickly.
eVTOL has been in development since the NASA Puffin technology concept was announced in 2009. NASA Puffin, a collaboration between NASA, MIT, and Georgia Tech, was a proof of concept designed to show that small personal aircraft are possible. It was built and tested on a small scale in 2010 to assess whether the aircraft would perform as expected, but was never built to scale.
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Other companies around the world have also made recent advances in eVTOL. Chinese automaker Yihan received permission to mass produce autonomous eVTOL taxis in April 2024. Supernal, a subsidiary of Hyundai, began flight tests of a four-seater air taxi in April 2025. Honda and Airbus have also been developing eVTOLs in recent years.
Jetson One is available to order now for approximately $150,000 (not including taxes and fees), with new orders expected to ship in 2028.
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