The company's headquarters are in
an anonymous low-rise building in a nondescript Davis, Calif.,
industrial park.
So there's no way to prepare for
what you'll find lurking inside:
A ferocious, eight-engine space
gizmo on steroids, complete with a Jetsons bubble cockpit and
searing red paint job—the lone existing prototype of the M400
Skycar.
Developing it has cost inventor
Paul Moller, 67, bigtime: some 40 years of his life, $70 million,
and two marriages.
For all that effort, outlay, and
anguish, he's still nowhere near his goal. While the Skycar looks
really cool, it doesn't do much sky-ing, nor is it capable of much
car-ing. Moller has done a handful of quick test flights but has
never gotten higher than a child's kite.
As for driving, a person could
realistically travel about 35 mph on the Skycar's spindly
three-wheeled landing gear—not ideal for the morning commute.
But don't mistake Moller for a
garden-variety UFO kook. He's considered a brilliant engineer by
legitimate aerospace types, and the Skycar has paid some
unexpected dividends, largely in the form of inventions Moller has
dreamed up and then spun off to continue financing the venture.
In trying to get his flying car off
the ground, he has become one of the world's foremost experts on
small rotary engines, and next year he will launch several
potentially lucrative projects. For example, he has a contract
with Madami International of Russellville, Ark., to begin
manufacturing engines for use in all-terrain vehicles.
Moller will also team up with
Thermo Fan of Arlington, Ohio, to begin producing small auxiliary
engines for use in 18-wheelers. He even has a strategic
partnership with a defense contractor (which preferred not to be
named) to explore how much power can be packed into the smallest
engine possible.
Moller is that rare entrepreneur
who can pinpoint the genesis of his idea. At age 5, growing up on
a farm outside the Canadian town of Trail (pop. 8,000), he helped
free a hummingbird that was trapped in a shed. It gave him an
opportunity to observe the animal up close. What struck him in
that moment: "Flying would be a great way to get to school."
Thanks to farm living, young Moller
had ready access to saws, boards, bales of wire, and anything else
you'd need to build stuff. He tried his hand at primitive
helicopters and rockets. But his imagination always stayed one
step ahead of his engineering ability.
In high school physics, he designed
a car that would run on water. One problem, explained his teacher:
It would require more energy to convert the water into fuel than
it would to run the car.
In 1963, Moller received a Ph.D.
from McGill University in Montreal. Then it was off to the
University of California at Davis to teach engineering. The space
race was gearing up, and a lunar landing seemed imminent. After
his classes Moller would rush home and work into the night on his
initial idea for a flying car, the XM-2.
"He tried to include me in his
interests, but I really didn't share them," says first wife Jeanne
LaTorre. "I have always been repelled by engine noise and exhaust
fumes."
The XM-2 had a perfectly round design, like
a flying saucer, and consisted of a skeleton of 7,500 short steel
tubes covered in a tight Dacron skin. A pair of 75-hp drone
engines provided the power. Moller built it straight out of his
mind's eye, without a single blueprint.
The XM-2 even flew, kind of. He was able to
pilot it to a height of about three feet, after which it began to
pitch and wobble, like a spinning top losing steam.
Still, it was enough for Moller to start
fielding business offers of varying legitimacy. One of the best
came from an investor named Bernardo Majalca. "I told him to quit
the university," says Majalca. "With his brains, I thought we
could build something the size of GM."
Moller quit, and Majalca proved to be a
tenacious rainmaker. Over 37 years he claims to have raised around
$10 million, mostly one investor at time, hitting up wealthy
doctors and retired pilots. Once Majalca thought he had the Bee
Gees lined up, but that fell through. Other times he's had to tap
into such off-the-beaten-path funding sources as Finnish venture
capital.
Still, for a money pit like the Skycar, no
amount is ever enough. Even $10 million represents just a sliver
of what the project has required so far.
Turns out, Moller traded a teaching post
that promised a comfy tenure for what he calls "perpetual
impending doom." It has forced him to be endlessly innovative,
finding various sidelines to feed his Skycar project money—always
more and more money.
Back in the early 1970s, Moller was an avid
skier. He began thinking about putting a lightweight engine in a
backpack to create a personal transportation device, allowing
skiers to fly up the sides of mountains. It would certainly
eliminate the hassle of riding the lift. But it would also be
noisy, he reasoned. Quiet resorts would start sounding like
Daytona tracks. So he began working on a very small muffler for
his backpack engine.
Moller also used to be a dirt bike
enthusiast. When he tested his invention on a motorcycle, it
muffled like a wet blanket. Between 1971 and 1988 he sold roughly
$100 million worth of SuperTrapp mufflers and siphoned every penny
of profit, some $20 million, back into his Skycar venture. He then
sold the muffler to Dreison International of Cleveland for another
$3.5 million. The SuperTrapp is still manufactured.
Then there's the almond farm. Moller grows
three varieties (mission, neplus, and nonpareil) and even sells
organic almond butter on eBay. Since he began farming in 1972, he
has had flush years and lean years but on net has managed to
funnel another $200,000 into the object of his obsession.
"I wish I could focus only on the Skycar,"
says Moller. "Business demands that you be pragmatic about
survival. I've had to get into these other things because Skycar
is a bottomless pit of money requirements."
Yet the various sidelines don't
begin to cover his costs. With interest rates low, Moller has
refinanced both his home and headquarters multiple times. His
wallet is thick with credit cards, and he often runs the
cumulative balance as high as $150,000.
As part of his endless quest for
cash, he even took Moller International public in 2002. The
company is listed on the Pink Sheets (MLER) and recently traded at
$1.50, down from a high of $8.25. For its latest fiscal year
Moller International had a $2 million loss. "Our finances are
basically awful," says Bruce Calkins, general manager of Moller
International.
Calkins is part of a skeleton crew
of roughly 20 Moller loyalists who continue to toil in the
34,500-square-foot headquarters. Abuzz this place ain't; the
loudest sound is the thrum of traffic on nearby I-80. A poster
hangs on the wall, extolling the inevitability of "radically new
technology." Below it is a sign, out of order, referring to the
drinking fountain. Boxes of toy Skycars, 1:38 scale and
manufactured in China, are arranged in neat stacks, waiting.
But follow Moller back into the
"fabrication center," and there it is: the one, the only, the real
deal. The current iteration of the Skycar seats four, weighs a
svelte 2,400 pounds, and flies with the aid of eight rotary
engines, scaled-down versions of the Wankel motor used in a Mazda
RX-8.
The invention is controlled with a
joystick. Press forward, fly forward. Pull back, go in reverse.
Take your hand off the joystick, and you hover in the air, like a
hummingbird. And yes, Moller has actually done this in ways that
are limited, but promising.
He has managed about 20 test
flights, never for more than a minute, never going higher than 30
feet, always tethered to a rope for safety. But from a strictly
definitional standpoint, the Skycar has flown.
Those brief flickers of flight are
what keep him going. One day soon, he hopes, it might be possible
to untether the Skycar, cruise to 350 mph, and soar to a ceiling
of 29,000 feet. "You'll be able to punch in a code for your
office, unfold the morning paper, and when you next look up,
you'll have arrived at work," he says.
Of course, the cost of the first
production units will be high, around $1 million. But maybe he can
cut a licensing arrangement with a biggie, perhaps GM or Boeing.
Sell 500,000 units a year, he calculates, and the price comes down
to something in the range of a midsized Caddie.
On Monday mornings, in particular,
Moller admits that this all sounds crazy, even to him. But on
optimistic days—apparently he has plenty of those—it simply seems
inevitable. "I think I'll be there in another ten years," he says.
Meanwhile, he claims to have
100 standing orders for the Skycar. Wes Moffett, 88, placed his
way back in 1974. Moffett, a retired inventor, says he holds 30
patents, including one for a cannon that can fire bales of hay
from an open field through the window of a barn. Moffett lives in
Bristol Harbor, N.Y. For many years now he has made a point of
selecting homes with flat roofs, the better to land a Skycar. "I
think it's going to change the world," he says.
* Link to the
original article at;
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/onlyonaol/bigstory
****
