The UK's Bellwether Industries has built and flown a half-scale prototype of its stunning Volar eVTOL, and is preparing to release footage. It's the most brazenly futuristic design we've ever seen, a flying hypercar for a utopia even sci-fi doesn't dare dream up.

I mean, look at the thing. It looks like it's doing 200 miles an hour sitting still. The lines are graceful, even sensual. The profile razor-sharp. The slanted louvers give it a rib cage and warn of frightening velocities. The stubby vee of the tailfins evokes the threat of a fighter jet, but the layered bodywork and its sumptuous, gleaming finish tell us this is a design of peace, hope and ambition.

This is a design to stir the imagination and the passions. You can picture it knifing into a cloud bank, leaving gently swirling vortices of vapor as the only calling card of its silent visit. You can see it gently touching down on an impossibly high-rise vertipad, its sleek glass roof retracting to let a lady and a gentleman out, dressed for the opera and right on time.

Bellwether's gorgeous Volar eVTOL begins flight testing at half-scale