Palmer Luckey just added a new vehicle to his collection — one that flies.
Over the weekend, Luckey took the Jetson One for a spin. The electric VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft was first announced in 2021, spawning a flurry of news about the future of flying vehicles. Almost four years later, Jetson completed its first worldwide delivery to the Oculus and Anduril cofounder.
In a video of his test flight, Luckey “christened” the vehicle by removing what appeared to be the protective plastic covering the aircraft’s control panel. Jetson founder and CTO Tomasz Patan and CEO Stéphan D’haene assisted in his flight. After suiting up in a helmet, Luckey pressed a button to start, and the propellers started whirring.
Luckey lifted off the ground, flew around a wide patch of grass in Carlsbad, California, and landed back down. He was then given a set of Jetson “wings,” a ceremonial pin.
The Jetson One is available for purchase, but new orders aren’t shipping for a bit. The vehicle costs $128,000, including the $8,000 upfront deposit, and does not require a pilot’s license to fly. The company has sold out of 2025 and 2026 vehicles, meaning the earliest shipping year would be 2027.
Luckey’s delivery was initially scheduled for 2023, but the delivery “took a bit longer than anticipated,” Patan wrote in a press release. Luckey spent 50 minutes training before taking flight.
Jetson wrote that Luckey’s flight was the “beginning of Jetson’s global rollout and a bold leap forward in personal aviation.”
In 2022, Patan told Business Insider that the vehicle was based on US regulations and that 85% of the company’s clients at the time were based in America.
“We were amazed by the amount of interest,” Patan said. “We would like to solve the transportation problem and move the ground-based transportation up to the air, making cities a better place to live.”
The Jetson One has a listed flight time of up to 20 minutes, a top speed of 63 miles per hour, and can operate up to 1,500 feet above ground level, according to the company.
Jetson raised a $15 million seed round in 2023 from angel investors. The company is one of many eVTOL developers to enter the space in the last decade, which includes Joby and Archer Aviation.
Two of these eVTOL companies — Kitty Hawk and Pivotal — were backed by Google cofounder Larry Page. Kitty Hawk wound down in 2022. Pivotal quietly pushed back its shipment date last year.
Luckey has a history of experimenting with new technology. As a young boy, he built coil guns, Tesla coils, and scion chargers.
“I got shocked a lot,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2013. “Looking back, it’s honestly a miracle I am not dead.”
Luckey would later start Oculus, an early virtual reality company that was acquired by Facebook, and cofound the defense tech giant Anduril, which manufactures drones among other military-focused technologies.
The Jetson One adds to Luckey’s extensive vehicle collection. In 2024, he told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang that he owned a boat bought from the US Navy, six helicopters, and a 1985 Marine Corps Humvee.
A famous early adopter, Luckey’s Jetson One purchase shows he’s still experimenting with new technologies — when he’s not streaming Kelly Clarkson.
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