SheriffВ is now chairman of Princess Yachts, but you might remember him as a former VP of Fiat and MD of McLaren Automotive. But when a consultant called Glenn Mercer, McKinsey & CompanyвЂ™s former head of automotive practice, told him he was really on toВ something,В and introduced him to a guy called Antony Sheriff, the path to v4.0 was set. He approached more investors and industry OEMs than heвЂ™s ready to admit, and faced down a lot of rejection. How credible can a bunch of Slovaks in a big garage building a flying car really be?вЂќ

We got a great response, but ofВ courseВ plenty of people still looked at what we were doing as aвЂ¦ curiosity. вЂњWe presented v3.0 in Vienna,вЂќ Juraj says, вЂњwhich was personally very emotional for me. Ten months later, v3.0 appeared, the work of 12 people, deepening the proof of concept, and developing the companyвЂ™s IP to an extent that AeroMobil now found itself registering multiple patents and on the radar of heavyweights like NASA and Boeing. It looks a bit shonky now, but at a global aviation gathering in Montreal, the industry acknowledged that there was more than just pie in the sky going on here. By the time an old school friend called Stefan Klein started selling him on his vision for a flying car, Juraj had prospered in the advertising industry and was supporting start-ups in Slovakia.ДЄeroMobil was founded in 2010, and the first prototype, v2.5, appeared in 2013. Costs are lower inВ easternВ Europe while still guaranteeing access to the EU, but thereвЂ™s also massive expertise here.

AeroMobilвЂ™s HQ is an impressively polished facility on the outskirts of Bratislava, a region that currently produces more cars per capita than anywhere else in the world, home to huge PSA and VW manufacturing facilities, andВ soonВ a shiny new ВЈ1bn JLR factory. Slovakia is not Silicon Valley, but donвЂ™t be too hasty about making judgements.

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