The Moller Skycar is a flying car with VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) capability which has been under development by Paul Moller for over fifty years. As of 2023, the M400 has not achieved free flight.
Due to the project's failure to deliver and associated financial issues, Moller has been accused of deliberate fraud. The parent company, Moller International, has been dormant since 2015.
Description
The M400 is a four-seat flying car, a type of VTOL personal air vehicle described by Moller as a "volantor" Skycar models from single-seat up to six-seat accommodation have also been envisaged. It is intended to be flyable by anyone who can drive, incorporating automated flight controls, with the driver only inputting direction and speed required.
The body of the M400 comprises a fairly conventional four-seat ground vehicle, which is expected to provide some aerodynamic lift in forward flight. Folding wings and a large, fixed horizontal stabilizer provide the main lifting surfaces, although early prototypes had no wing fitted. VTOL lift and forward thrust in the air are provided by four pivoting ducted fan pods which deflect air vertically for takeoff and horizontally for forward flight. The pods enclose the propellers and engines, which are direct-coupled, and have movable deflector vanes at the rear to provide additional thrust vectoring.
The Skycar is not intended to be piloted like a traditional fixed wing airplane, and would have limited pilot controls, which the pilot uses to inform the computer control system of the desired flight maneuvers.
Rotapower engines
The Rotapower engines used in the prototypes are being developed by an affiliate Moller company called Freedom Motors. Each power unit comprises a Wankel rotary engine directly driving a ducted fan. The housing is lined with Kevlar to contain the fan blades in the event of failure. The Skycar has four such nacelles, each with two Rotapower engines mounted in tandem. All eight engines operate independently under computer control and, as demonstrated during a tethered flight, allow for a vertical controlled landing should any one engine fail.
The Rotapower engine is based on a rotary engine developed by Outboard Marine Corporation (OMC) in the 1970s and is claimed to be able to run on various fuels including gasoline, diesel, methanol, and clean renewable ethanol. Earlier Rotapower models used gasoline. On November 1, 2013 Moller announced that the 530 cc Rotapower engine had achieved using alcohol (ethanol) on their test stand, yielding an effective 3 horsepower per pound (5 kW/kg) of weight.
Like the M400 itself, the Rotapower engine has never entered production.
History
After forty years and $100,000,000 in expenditure the Skycar demonstrated tethered hovering capability in 2003. It has been extensively marketed for pre-order sale since the 1990s as Moller attempted to raise more money for development.
In 2003 hover tests were performed by a Skycar prototype that for insurance reasons was tethered, but not hung, to a crane.
Setbacks
In 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Moller for civil fraud (Securities And Exchange Commission v. Moller International, Inc., and Paul S. Moller, Defendants) in connection with the sale of unregistered stock, and for making unsubstantiated claims about the performance of the Skycar, even though Moller's statements had passed the review and received "cleared comments" from the SEC during the filing and public information phase prior to being listed as a publicly traded company. Without admitting any wrongdoing, Moller agreed to pay $50,000 to settle the matter quickly so as not to delay the initial public offering of the stock. In the words of the SEC complaint, "As of late 2002, MI's approximately 40 years' of development has resulted in a prototype Skycar capable of hovering about fifteen feet above the ground." The shareholders of Moller International banded together to form a group known as "Shareholders of Moller International ("SoMI"),
In October 2006, Moller attempted to auction the only prototype of its M200X model on eBay. It failed to sell. The highest bid was $3,000,100; Moller reported at the annual meeting of stockholders on October 21, 2006 in Davis, California, that the reserve price had been $3,500,000. A previous attempt in 2003 to sell the M400 via eBay was also unsuccessful, as were two subsequent attempts to sell the M400 prototype on eBay in July 2017.