在众多被谈及的飞行汽车制造商中，吉利集团的Terrafugia显然与中国的关系最为密切，但最开始它并不是一家中国企业。Terrafugia最初是由5位美国麻省理工学院的毕业生共同创立于2006年，他们的团队和商业计划获得了2006年麻省理工学院10万美元创业大赛的亚军，最初创立公司的大部分资金也是来自于首席执行官兼创始人卡尔?迪特里希(Carl Dietrich)的3万美元麻省理工学院(Lemelson-MIT)学生奖。

在卡尔?迪特里希(Carl Dietrich)的带领下，Terrafugia进行了多次融资，第一笔近30万美元的融资完成于2006年公司成立后不久，之后陆续跟进，股东最多时超过百人。在不过短短5年左右的时间里，Terrafugia就在这个相对偏门的领域获得了超过2500万美元的潜在收入，实在让人惊叹。

 不过由于各国法规的不同，Terrafugia只在美国销售，这就使得原本狭小的市场变得更小了，再加上汽车制造业本身就是一个资金密集的行业，研发、制造、生产无论哪一个环节都需要大量资金支持，但没有好的销量和市场回报，经营状况就会陷入恶性循环之中。果不其然，由于公司资金遭遇瓶颈，2017年11月13日，浙江吉利控股集团正式官方宣布与美国Terrafugia飞行汽车公司达成最终协议，将收购Terrafugia的全部业务及资产，在未来吉利方将主导管理企业的发展。

 那么吉利花重金购买的Terrafugia公司的飞行汽车到底是什么样的？据悉，Transition车型既可在陆地行驶，也可在空中航行，它的翅膀可以在着陆时折叠，使其能停入车库。它采用的是混合动力系统，准乘2人，最大飞行速度为160km/h，最大飞行高度为1万英尺(3048米)，空中续航里程为640km，为了节省燃油，在陆地行驶时Transition会采用电力驱动。

 作为一款独特的交通工具，Transition严格按照航空和汽车的双重安全要求打造，符合美国联邦航空管理局（FAA）和美国国家公路交通安全管理局（NHTSA）标准。同时由于它的特殊性，想要驾驶它上路或上空，不仅需要汽车驾照，还需要拥有飞行执照。这也就意味着，驾乘Transition绝对只是少数人的专利。

吉利日前宣布，太力飞行汽车预计今年10月开始第一代产品Transition的预订工作，预售价约为19万美元，主要针对美国市场，首批量产车将于2019年问世。

 英文版

English version

Development and listing time of Geely Terrafugia flying car

Geely's Terrafugia is clearly the closest of the many flying carmakers in question to China, but initially it was not a Chinese company. Terrafugia was first founded in 2006 by five MIT graduates whose team and business plan won the runner-up to the 2006 MIT $100,000 entrepreneurship contest, and most of the initial funding for the company came from CEO and founder Carl Dietrich. The $30 thousand Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Lemelson-MIT) student award.

Under the leadership of Carl Dietrich, Terrafugia made a number of financing, the first nearly $300,000 financing completed shortly after the company was established in 2006, and then followed up with more than 100 shareholders. In less than five years or so, Terrafugia has amazingly earned more than $25 million in potential revenue in this relatively skewed field.

But Terrafugia is sold only in the U.S. because of different laws and regulations, which makes the original narrow market smaller, and the automobile industry itself is a capital-intensive industry, R&D, manufacturing, production regardless of which link needs a lot of financial support, but there is no good sales and market returns. Business will be in a vicious circle. Sure enough, due to the company's capital bottleneck, on November 13, 2017, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group officially announced a final agreement with Terrafugia Flying Automobile Company, the United States, will buy all Terrafugia business and assets, in the future Geely will dominate the management of enterprise development.

So what is the flying car of Terrafugia, which is heavily purchased by Geely? The Transition can travel on land or in the air, and its wings fold when landing, allowing it to park in the garage. It uses a hybrid system with two passengers, a maximum speed of 160 km / h, a maximum altitude of 10,000 feet (3048 meters) and an air range of 640 km. To save fuel, the Transition will be powered by electricity on land.

As a unique vehicle, Transition is built strictly to meet the dual safety requirements of aviation and automobiles, and meets the standards of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). At the same time, because of its particularity, in order to drive it on the road or above, not only need a car license, but also need to have a flight license. This means that driving Transition is definitely only a minority patent.

Geely recently announced that Taili Flight is expected to start reserving its first-generation Transition in October for about $190,000, mainly for the U.S. market, with the first mass-produced vehicles due out in 2019.（文来源：飞行汽车feiauto）www.feiauto.com

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