Samson Sky Announces Record-Breaking Sales for Switchblade Flying Car
During the week-long EAA AirVenture aviation celebration in Oshkosh, WI, the flying car Switchblade added 115 vehicles to their order books, valued at nearly $22M. This two-seat flying sports car has over 2400 reservations from 57 countries, including all 50 US states. In addition to reservations, over 100 vehicles have been pre-purchased by those wanting to gain the earliest delivery positions.
"It was great to be back at AirVenture to take advantage of all the industry experts and suppliers who attend the show," said Sam Bousfield, designer of the Switchblade, and founder and CEO of Samson Sky. "We were able to hold several key meetings with future partners and investors that made the show an even bigger success for us."
The test flights so far have been held at the Moses Lake Airport in Central Washington, with a flight test team making certain that the testing was accomplished successfully. Powered by a 200 hp liquid cooled Samson 3 engine, the vehicle is being run through a rigorous flight test program to validate flight capabilities and find and correct any deviations from the company's lofty goal of "high performance in both modes" as a car and a plane. Flight testing will continue for several months while the Samson Team learns from these flights and finalizes the production engineering that will allow Samson to start Switchblade production.
Samson has been working through the details of production to keep up with the great demand being expressed for the Switchblade. The team spent nearly four years developing carbon fiber production processes to enable the company to ramp up parts production quickly and at much less cost than the current state of the art.
The Switchblade is a three wheel, street-legal vehicle that you keep parked in your garage. You drive it from your garage to a nearby airport. Once there, the wings swing out and the tail extends in under three minutes. You fly your registered aircraft to the airport nearest your destination, at up to 160mph. Then you simply land, transform your flying sports car back to driving mode – the wings and tail safely stowed and protected – and drive to your final destination.
"The feedback we're getting is, the practicality of the Switchblade checks all the boxes for what people truly want in a flying car," says Bousfield. "We hope a Switchblade will grace the skies and streets of your city very soon."
