‘Personal Aircraft’ Google Plane Spotted During Testing at Hollister Airport

A local caught a picture of a new Google plane during testing at Hollister Airport in California. Witnesses told the Mercury News that they saw the aircraft hovering very low to the ground and even had the ability to land vertically.

This is the prototype for a new flying “car”, or personal aircraft, currently being developed by Zee.Aero Inc. under funding from Google co-founder Larry Page.

Zee.Aero was awarded the patent for a personal aircraft vehicle in 2013. The plane is fitted with an array of vertical lift rotors, with two tandem wings and a row of forward thrust propellers.

In the patent, Zee.Aero’s founding CEO and principal scientist, Ilan Kroo, describes the functional and safety-related purposes for the many rotors lining the aircraft:

The vertical lift rotors, in combination with a front and rear wing, permits a balancing of the center of lift with the center of gravity for both vertical and horizontal flight… Using multiple independent rotors provides redundancy and the elimination of single point failure modes that can make the vehicle non-operable in flight.

Kroo hired more than 100 aerospace engineers to make these airborne vehicles a reality.

As this aircraft is introduced to the market, there could possibly be an expansion of air travel and a phasing out of ground travel seen in the immediate future.