DeLorean Takes A Ride On Tesla’s “Flying Car” Coattails

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As expected, Tesla CEO Elon Musk wowed the automotive press with last night’s unveiling of the long-awaited Roadster EV, to be produced in multiple editions including one that can go airborne for a brief period. As for electric “flying cars” in a practical sense, that comes under the heading of eVOTL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft, and the DeLorean Motor Company is among the startups with one of those up its sleeve.

Whatever Happened To DeLorean?

Cemented forever in American cultural history through the film “Back to the Future,” the gull-winged 1981 DeLorean MC-12 stole the show but failed to crack a profit for its maker. The DeLorean name fell into the dustbin of automotive history the very next year, though not for long. In 2022 the automaker resurfaced — in name only, though — teasing a new EV, the Alpha5, with a range of more than 300 miles and top speeds clocking in at 155 mph.

“Taking design cues from the past to inspire the future, the new EV visibly showcases its iconic DNA,” DeLorean Motor Company enthused in a press statement in May of 2022.

DMC chief marketing officer Troy Beetz also chipped in his two cents. “There was this enormous responsibility to make sure we honored the history of the DeLorean brand, but an even greater responsibility in curating its future,” Beetz stated (see more DMC background here).

Here Comes DeLorean, Again

While all this was going on, Paul DeLorean (nephew of original DMC founder John), launched the startup Delorean Aerospace in 2017 with an eye on sending its showcase eVTOL, the DR-7 “flying car,” into the air.

“It is planned to be a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (VTOL) that will have space for two people and be electrically-powered,” CleanTechnica’s sources reported in 2017.

The DR-7 was designed around the ambitious range of 193 kilometers (about 120 miles), to be achieved by a row of two fans centered in the eVTOL’s midsection, thusly:

These fans lift the vehicle into the air, before rotating to provide power to move the vehicle forward.

In terms of size, the widest section of the wingspan will be 5.6m and the overall length will be 6m.

There will be two sets of wings and a small set of winglets, with the large wings able to be folded towards the main body of the vehicle to allow for storage.

So, Will It Fly?

That brings us up to the launch of the Tesla Roadster EV on October 15. For months, weeks, and days leading up to the event, the Intertubes were burning up with rumors that Tesla CEO Elon Musk would demonstrate a DeLorean-level “flying car.”

Apparently one of the Roadsters did make if off the ground with an assist from the thrusters contributed by SpaceX (check out CleanTechnica’s take here). In the meantime, the folks at the newly hatched, Australia-based eVOTL “flying car” competition Airspeeder International Series seized the opportunity to promote themselves and a flying DeLorean, too.

“Iconic American marque enters the world’s first electric flying car racing series as a constructor, with the DeLorean Airspeeder Team racing from November 2026,” Airspeeder proclaims on its website, linking to a DMC press release dated October 13, just two days before the Tesla Roadster launch event. In the press release, DMC announced that it will enter the inaugural Airspeeder series in November.

“The team will compete as the DeLorean Airspeeder Team and will make its race debut when the 2026–27 season opens in November 2026,” DMC announced.

“The entry brings one of the most recognizable names in automotive history to the grid of a sport built on electric propulsion, advanced flight control and AI-enabled safety systems,” DMC continued.

For the record, the DMC Airspeeder racing team is not affiliated with DeLorean Aerospace. That’s a separate company, which has produced an eVOTL prototype that looks nothing like the airborne vehicle depicted on DMC’s YouTube channel.

Next Steps For The Flying Car Of The Future

DMC’s announcement was a bit of a head scratcher, considering that it seems to have come out of nowhere. “The aircraft design, pilot line-up and sporting program will be revealed ahead of the season opener,” the company explained, though it did let on that it will race an Airspeeder Mk3C in November.

That’s…interesting! The Mk3C is not an in-house creation of DMC. It is an eVTOL developed by the aerospace startup Alauda, which is affiliated with Airspeeder through its founder Matt Pearson.

The initial plan for the racing series, unveiled in 2021, involved remote-control operation of a field of identical, uncrewed Mk3Cs as a warm-up for crewed events. It’s still a little unclear if anybody will be in the cockpit when the first series finally kicks off in November, though DMC does state that its Airspeeder team includes pilots.

“In the Airspeeder International Series, national teams race electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft in three dimensions through electronically defined courses, rather than around a conventional circuit,” DMC further notes.

Evidently, after the inaugural series runs its course, teams are expected to develop their own eVOTLs. “The DeLorean Airspeeder for the 2027–28 season will be designed in collaboration with student engineering teams at universities across the United States, including the University of California, [and] collaborators at UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech,” DMC explains.

“Through its partnership with Airspeeder, DeLorean aims to participate at the ground level, advancing not only the technology behind flying vehicles but also the regulatory, safety and compliance frameworks required for their responsible adoption,” DMC adds, perhaps in an attempt to crowd DeLorean Aerospace out of the picture before the latter can get its eVOTL out of the prototype phase.

And What About That Flying Tesla Roadster?

Yes, what about it. The more immediate question is, what about Elon Musk? The October 15 Roadster kickoff was clouded by a fresh trifecta of negative press for Musk, who is already under fire on multiple fronts including his lethal deconstruction of the longstanding USAID program.

The latest news includes (1) Musk’s high-dollar funding of Republican candidates in the run-up to Election Day 2026, tying himself even closer to the increasingly toxic Trump brand, (2) new reporting on Musk’s failure to curtail government spending during his high profile stint as head of Trump’s “DOGE” budget cutting office, and (3) a particularly concerning incident earlier this week, during which a military version of the Starlink satellite branch of Musk’s SpaceX venture (Starshield, for the record) abruptly throttled back service in Ukraine, leaving that country even more vulnerable to attacks by Russia than ever before.

On first reports, the finger of blame for the Starshield disruption pointed at Musk, who has frequently suggested that he, not the US government, dictates how Ukraine can use SpaceX technology to defend itself after Russia launched an unprovoked attack on the country in 2022. However, in this instance Musk promptly deflected, stating on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) that the dial-down order was ultimately Trump’s responsibility.

Now Reuters has reported that the call did indeed come from the White House, citing anonymous sources. “The officials said ‌leaders at the Defense Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed,” Reuters stated in a story posted at 7:07 pm on October 15, barely an hour before the Roadster launch event was slated to commence.

Update: Now the Kyiv Independent, citing a scoop by The Telegraph, reports that Elon Musk initiated the conversation that resulted in the White House order.

So, whodunnit? Either way, the whole episode sparked an immediate, furious bipartisan uproar in Congress and service was soon restored to normal levels, but the damage was done to SpaceX’s reputation, no matter who gave the order. As the episode unfolded, Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, was among those indicating that Musk and SpaceX, and the US for that matter, have lost whatever trust remains.

“Hey, @elonmusk, big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you,” Sikorski wrote on X, on October 14.

While we’re at it, here’s a PSA: If you have questions about your voter registration status or anything else about the 2026 elections, avoid “VoteSafe.org.” The website is funded by Musk’s America PAC and has been described as a thinly veiled attempt to collect voter information for partisan purposes. Go to legit websites like vote.gov and vote411.org (a project of the League of Women Voters) to connect with your local elections office.

Image: The DeLorean Motor Company has hitched the iconic DeLorean name to the new Airspeeder series, a showcase for cutting edge “flying car” eVTOL technology (screenshot courtesy of DMC via YouTube).