The term “flying car” is often misused to describe passenger drones, which are simply aircraft at their core, but the term is appropriate for Terrafugia, which makes vehicles that can both drive on roads and fly in the sky.
Now Geely, the Chinese automotive company behind Volvo, announced that it acquired the company in order to bring their technology to market. Expand
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Earlier this year, we wrote a profile on an interesting startup, Zee Aero, developing a battery-powered vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft near Google’s X lab. The company caught our attention when it started hiring talent from NASA, Tesla and Stanford.
At the time, we couldn’t confirm where the money was coming from, but today we learn that Alphabet’s billionaire CEO Larry Page is secretively behind the electric aircraft startup, reportedly financing it with over $100 million, and even setting up a competing startup, Kitty Hawk, to test another model.
The group’s proximity with Google led a lot of people to believe it was financed by the tech giant, but in fact, Page is financing the initiative himself and not through Alphabet or Google Ventures. Expand
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