Salaff and Bitar’s joint venture, Urban eVTOL, just recently won the NASA “Future-Scaping Our Skies Challenge” that “aims to understand how societal, technological, environmental, economic, regulatory, and political changes over the next 30 years could impact aviation and vice versa.” So, this is no joke, these two are indeed, for real.
Bitar has a bunch of experience in vertical propulsion by building and developing electric jetpacks and vehicles at Electric Jet Aircraft. So he knows a thing or two about sending things into the air and keeping them there.
Salaff is the award-winning designer behind the Mazda Furai concept car that was unfortunately declared dead when it caught fire at a photography session in 2008. But he’s also responsible for the SALAFF C2 supercar concept that hasn’t caught fire as of the time of writing.