James Crook helps to make Tesla's flying car

James Crook (Craig 2002-07) was one of the team who developed Tesla's flying car, which was revealed in a demonstration in Texas last week.

James, who had previously worked for a decade at F1 in Oxfordshire, joined Tesla in 2022, where his job was to lead aerodynamic development of the Tesla Roadster. He told The Times: 'There were long hours building prototypes, different iterations with the inevitable setbacks and failures along the way. When we successfully turned the car upside down for the first time, the atmosphere was electric.'

With an engineering degree from Cambridge, James said that his role in the project was to make sure 'it could stick to the ground, like a normal, high-performance hypercar'. This enabled the vehicle to drive upside down on a ramp before being launched into the air where high-pressure air inside specialised tanks gave the car the energy to fly. 

He says: 'I never got to fly inside the car myself although I did witness one of the first autonomous flights with my own eyes and so can confirm it isn’t AI despite some chatter online!'

James has since moved on from Tesla, which he described as the most astonishing experience, and he is now working on new exciting projects.