A year after the Switchblade flying car took its flight, the company that developed the vehicle has redesigned its look to make it easier and cheaper to produce.

Samson Sky announced the first successful flight in November 2023, them moved into a new phase of production engineering.

The company announced this week it will sharing their enhanced body design for what will be their production vehicles.

“The new design improves performance and shortens the pathway to production by transferring much of what worked well in the test vehicle that flew, into the new streamlined design,” said Sam Bousfield, Samson Sky CEO and designer of the Switchblade. He said the new design is simpler and easier to build.

“Everything we do is with the mindset of how we are going to produce thousands of Switchblades,” said Bousfield.

Bousfield said its very common for a company developing a new aircraft to redesign it before going into a production stage.

“There are always changes and modifications based on things learned from flight testing, and we’ve used these to improve even more on our original design, while keeping our signature swinging wings that tuck away completely inside the vehicle when driving,” he said.

The test vehicle that flew in 2023 achieved their target of 125 mph in ground testing, and company officials stated they made these design changes to achieve their flying cruise speed target.

According to Bousfield, wind tunnel testing in May validated that the new design with the sleeker body and thruster propellers will allow Samson to meet their target of 160-mph flying cruise speed.

Samson is building three test vehicles over the next 18 months to be used for intensive testing on every aspect of the vehicle, both flying and driving, prior to ramping up production.

Samson officials stated that the company already has reservations from 57 countries and all 50 states — a potential sales value of more than $450 million.