Filipino Flying Car Maker Partners with Australian Company

Remember when we told you about the Filipino inventor who invented a flying car? According to ABS-CBN, Kyxz Mendiola was able to find an Australian company to back him up in developing his “multicopter”/flying vehicle, the Koncepto Milenya.

Star 8 International, a company that specializes in green energy and e-vehicle technology, plans to develop commercial versions of Mendoza’s machine, and target Hong Kong, Europe, and Australia.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Star 8 was an exhibitor at the 6th Philippine Electric Vehicle Summit held in August and part of its display were its electric amphibious bus and tricycle.

According to Star 8 CEO and President Jacob Maimon, they plan to call it “electric manned aerial vehicle” or EMAV, which can accommodate two passengers–with a combined weight of 200 kilos–all while hovering up in mid-air for about an hour.

“When we have to go somewhere about an hour’s drive, this can take you there in five minutes,” said Maimon

Star 8 will provide the financial backing to help Mendoza develop the Koncepto Milenya.

“It’s very hard when you have no funds, no support, it’s so hard to do it by yourself,” said Maimon, who added he was also an inventor himself. “We will get there very fast now, what with the help that we can give him.”

“All the hard work paid off”

Presently, Mendoza’s machine can carry one person as high as 15-20 feet, at a speed that’s less than 65 kph. It can hover in mid-air in a little over 10 minutes. He plans to extend this to an hour.

The former camera operator and dancer admitted he in’t really an engineer, but was just interested in tinkering with electronics. One of his interests is remote-controlled planes and helicopters, which gave him the idea of creating a flying car eight years ago.

“When drone technology started coming to the Philippines, I started building drones as a hobby, and for filming,” Mendiola told ANC’s Future Perfect Tech Shorts.

It took him a lot of trial-and-errors before he was able to perfect the machine. What’s more, it took a long time to save enough money to buy the parts.

The end result was still worth the sacrifices.

“It was amazing,” Mendiola told Reuters after what he said was the first public test flight of his invention. “All the hard work paid off. Everything worked perfect.”