Telstra and Flying Car Racing? That's a thing!

Telstra has teamed up with the Airspeeder racing series in a deal that leverages the 5G network for Vehicle to Vehicle and other high speed communications – between FLYING RACE CARS!

Well, let’s be clear, these are not cars. They are manned drones, not sure why we always refer to big drones like this as flying cars, but its the same as those two wheeled electric balance boards we all call hoverboards right?

Airspeeder is a racing series created by the world’s only high performance electric VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) manufacturer Alauda Aeronautics which took their first flights outside of Adelaide this past June.

Head of Telstra Purple (Telstra’s enterprise business services company), Christopher Smith was pumped about the partnership leveraging Telstra tech “Cutting-edge racing requires cutting-edge capability which we’ve delivered through Telstra Purple’s extensive expertise, technical capabilities and our strategic collaboration agreement with AWS, combined with Australia’s most advanced 5G.

“Key components of Airspeeder’s race control system include private network communications, data visualisation, edge compute power and bespoke app development. Our communications expertise is critical for a sport that is driven by data from the ground up; the high speeds, low latency and high-capacity connectivity of Telstra 5G will change the way car racing is experienced.

“Just as Formula One has driven innovation for the cars we use today, Airspeeder’s vision for the world’s first electric flying car racing series has the potential to transform the way we move around cities.” Mr Smith said.

The founder of Airspeeder Matt Pearson says the partnership will lead to advances in technology that will assist in future air-mobility ventures

“In delivering on our vision to create the world’s first racing series for electric flying cars we have been drawn to South Australia for some of the very best technical minds from motorsport, aviation and performance automotive.

“Together, we will hasten the arrival of a new mobility technology that has been promised for generations whilst bringing a new form of motorsport to millions of fans across the globe from some of the world’s most remote and beautiful locations,” Mr Pearson said.