A local startup says their flying car is now operable, they’ve got a hype video for it, and insist they are now taking pre-orders for this $300,000 vehicle. But there may not be many places in the Bay Area you can legally fly it.

You might remember back in 2017 when then-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said we’d have flying cars by the year 2020. (He was ousted as CEO two months later.) But the idea has still been flying around Silicon Valley for a while, and we noted two years ago that a San Mateo-based company called Alef Aeronautics had received FAA approval to test their flying cars.

Whatever progress they may have made is shown in the brief hype video above. But now KTVU reports that Alef Aeronautics is taking pre-orders on this $300,000 flying car, the Alef Model A that they call the "first true flying car in history." It's sort of a hybrid driving and flying car that the company says is “Designed to drive on the street, take off vertically when needed and fly overhead above traffic.”

This Batmobile-looking contraption has “vertical takeoff and landing capabilities” according to KTVU, so it does not need a runway to take off or land.  It’s an all-electric vehicle, and can supposedly drive 110 miles (or fly 200 miles) on a single charge.

That’s a pretty limited range as far as electric vehicles go. But hey, it can fly! The company insists in a  press release that "On average, the Alef flying car uses less energy per trip than a Tesla or any other EV.”

There are other apparent drawbacks. The car's pre-order page notes that “Alef ‘Model A’ is a Low Speed Vehicle (LSV) which has legal speed and other limitations in most states.” These low-speed vehicles can generally only go about 25 miles per hour, so this may not be a regular, daily-use kind of car.

And as KTVU adds, it is flight-legal in some areas, but only during daylight hours. That station also notes that these flying vehicles are “prohibited from going over congested or densely populated areas like cities or towns.” So that’s…. most of the Bay Area?

Either way, you can get on the pre-order list for $150, or the “Priority Queue” for $1,500. Again, the car itself — whenever it’s ready — will cost $300,000.

So when will it be ready? Alef Aeronautics tells KTVU that "If everything goes according to plan, and no major external changes, Alef plans to start production of the first vehicle by the end of 2025 or Q1 of 2026.”

Related: San Mateo-Based Startup Wins FAA Approval To Test Their Futuristic, $300,000 Flying Car [SFist]

Image: Alef Aeronautics