BECCARII is an all-terrain VTOL vehicle: one machine that drives on tracks, takes off vertically, flies and swims. It is built by B-Technology Sp. z o.o. in Jasionka, Poland, and its propulsion system is protected by a granted patent family with priority in 2012.
Most flying-car programmes solve one problem: how to get a passenger into the air. That leaves a gap nobody addresses — what happens when the aircraft lands somewhere that is not a vertiport. BECCARII starts from the opposite end. The vehicle is designed to keep moving after it lands, over ground, debris and water, and to take off again from wherever it happens to be.
The idea: put the propellers inside the tracks
The defining engineering decision is where the propellers sit. In BECCARII they are built inside the composite caterpillar tracks — not above the hull, not on outriggers.
That single choice does six jobs at once:
- The track is the landing gear. No separate skids or legs to carry.
- The track shields the propellers all around. Rotor strikes are the classic failure mode when an aircraft touches down on unprepared ground; here the structure that meets the ground is also the guard.
- The track delivers full driving capability. Not a taxi mode — real off-road traction.
- The track never shadows the propellers. Airflow into the disc stays clean.
- The track holds the propellers high above the ground. Rotor clearance comes free with the geometry.
- A large track diameter clears major obstacles. The same part that protects the thrust also sets the approach angle.
Conventional layouts need separate parts for each of those functions. Fewer parts means lower mass and fewer things that can fail.
Four domains, one drivetrain
| Function | What it does |
|---|---|
| Drive | Composite caterpillar tracks conquer obstacles on the ground. |
| VTOL | Vertical take-off and landing — no runway, no helipad, no vertiport. |
| Fly | Air transport over longer distances and over anything impassable. |
| Swim | A sealed amphibious hull lets the vehicle cross water rather than go around it. |
The point is not that the vehicle can do four things. It is that it can switch between them mid-mission, without infrastructure and without a transfer. A river stops a ground vehicle. A ravine stops a boat. An unprepared landing site stops a helicopter. None of them stops a machine that can change domain in seconds.
Why the trade-off is worth it
Flight is expensive in energy terms; driving and swimming are roughly twenty times cheaper. On the same energy budget, BECCARII operates on the order of fifteen times longer on the surface than in the air. A mission is therefore measured in hours, not in minutes of hover.
This is the same trade the helicopter made in 1939. A helicopter loses to a fixed-wing aircraft on almost every flight parameter — speed, altitude, range — and won anyway, because vertical take-off removed the runway from the equation. BECCARII accepts a similar loss in pure flight performance and buys something no aircraft has: the ability to keep going after it lands.
Continuity instead of abort. A helicopter flies to the scene, attempts to land, conditions deteriorate, the mission is aborted. BECCARII drives to the obstacle, hops it under its own rotors, lands imperfectly, and continues on the ground or on the water.
Redundancy
Propulsion is distributed across eight electric units. If two of the eight fail, the vehicle lands safely on the remaining six. The tracked structure that protects the propellers in flight also absorbs an imperfect touchdown.
What the design eliminates
- No differential.
- No gearbox.
- No drive shafts.
Fewer parts, lower mass, higher reliability — and a drivetrain that is electric end to end.
Development status
A fully functional 1:3-scale prototype flies and performs full manoeuvres. It currently runs one propeller per track; the production-grade coaxial setup will halve that count while doubling redundancy.
Questions we are asked
Is BECCARII a flying car or a drone?
Neither label fits. It is a multi-environment vehicle: it drives on tracks like a ground machine, takes off vertically like a helicopter, and crosses water like a boat. The category it belongs to did not exist before it.
Does it need a runway or a helipad?
No. Take-off and landing are vertical, and the tracked undercarriage is designed for unprepared ground — the vehicle does not need a prepared landing site at all.
How is this different from an eVTOL air taxi?
Air taxis are optimised for point-to-point flight between prepared sites. BECCARII is optimised for reaching places that have no prepared sites, and for continuing the mission after landing.
What happens if a propeller fails?
Propulsion is distributed across eight units. The vehicle lands safely with two of them out.
Is the technology protected?
Yes — the propulsion system (PDU) is covered by a granted patent family with priority in 2012, spanning more than 50 jurisdictions. Details on the patent page.
See also: the patent family · mission profiles · fact sheet