#213, CES: Moonbikes and Flying Formula 1 Cars

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If the entrepreneurs at MACA get what they’re were hoping for at CES, motorsports enthusiasts may soon be watching racing featuring the MACA Flying Formula 1 Car. The fast and futuristic-looking vehicle is called a “Carcopter.” It could change motorsports, or so its creators believe.

Much different but the same, Nicolas Muron, founder ad CEO of Moonbikes (www.moonbikes.com) believes his electric snowbikes will be a new way to travel on snowmobile trails and on private land.

The two new vehicles were featured at the recently concluded Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The principles involved are my guests on this episode of The Weekly Driver Podcast.

Co-host Bruce Aldrich is the producer of this episode in Sacramento. I attended the show and spoke with our guests during the first night of the three-day gathering called CES Unveiled.

With the slogan, “Future is in the Air,” MACA (www.macaflight.com), still a prototype, is an aerodynamic speed machine its aviation brain trust hopes will become the first (manned) flying hydrogen Formula 1 car. It’s billed with a top speed of 153 miles per hour.

Former fighter pilot Thierry de Boisvilliers and former Airbus executive Michael Krollak are the creators of the hydrogen-powered racer. They hope by 2023 races will be held by drivers in the lightweight, twin helicopter-blade vehicles hovering around tracks.

The pending idea is an effort to reduce the carbon emissions produced by traditional combustion engines on the Formula 1 track.

“We developed this because we really want to go faster use this technology using hydrogen,” said de Boisvilliers. “The vehicle is seven meters (23 feet) long and there’s one pilot on board. We will fly the first one by the end of 2022 and are doing all of the environmental appraisings and we are developing the race concept.”

Muron, self-describes as a “motor and tech lover,” beliveves winter recreation enthusiasts needed another transportation mode. The Moonbike lineup was developed during the winter of 2015 when the inventor was visiting his grandparents’ home in the small village of Saint-Nicolas-de-Véroce in the French Alps.

Snowmobiles are too noisy and emit too much pollution. Muron’s Moonbike idea, a “silent sled,” was born.

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