Alef begins building first production vehicle

Deep Dive

by Yves Le Marquand

12 December 2025

Alef Aeronautics has begun manufacturing the first flying car it will deliver to a customer, construction is expected to take several months.

More time will be spent on early models of Alef’s Model A ultralight, all-electric flying car because the majority of vehicle is built by hand, said the company.

“Rigorous testing of individual parts and a large number of test flights of the assembled car are involved during production,” Alef said in a statement. The company expects this process to allow it to optimise manufacturing before building out automated mass production.

The first cars will be manufactured in at Alef’s facility in Silicon Valley, California. However, automated production could be at one of several sites in the US. Jim Dukhovny, CEO of Alef confirmed a number of agreements for potential manufacturing sites had been signed.

“We are happy to report that production of the first flying car has started on schedule. The team worked hard to meet the timeline, because we know people are waiting,” said Dukhovny.

Early hand-made Alef cars will be delivered to only a “few” customers, said Alef. The company plan to use early deliveries as a sandbox to test the vehicles in a real world environment under controlled conditions. Alef plans to train and provide compliance and maintenance support to those early adopters.

That said, Dukhovny is keen to stress they will also be commercial deliveries to real customers from an investor queue. “Customers who placed the highest deposits get priority,” he said. “[But] yes, the first usage is planned to be very controlled and the goal is to learn and to do adjustments before the wider rollout.”

Dukhovny said starting production is less of a milestone, and more of a timing decision. “Any time during last three years we could have made a choice of starting to produce the first car,” he explained. “We think right now, we arrived at a time where it is safe and stable enough, and the market timing is right.”

Alef is keeping its customer base under wraps, however Dukhovny said he hopes the first customer to take delivery will be happy to waive their anonymity.

Once they take delivery and training is complete, the owner will be able to fly in rural areas with low populations. The customer should also be able to drive on rural roads, said Dukhovny.

“The first model is conformant to the Ultralight aircraft category, hence requiring no certification,” he explained. “With respect to the roads, rural traffic commute is also a great problem in US, Europe and Asia. So we hope to start addressing it first with Alef Model A ultralight.”

Despite pursuing an ultralight certification with the Model A, Dukhovny also said Alef is working on more heavier aircraft certifications.