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New Zealand's longest-running online daily news and commentary publication, now in its 25th year. The opinion pieces presented here are not purported to be fact but reasonable effort is made to ensure accuracy.

Content copyright © 1995 - 2019 to Bruce Simpson (aka Aardvark), the logo was kindly created for Aardvark Daily by the folks at aardvark.co.uk



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People do not learn

17 January 2022

Is this a scam or just another case of people not doing their research and honestly believing in what they're trying to sell?

I've written about this concept on several occasions over the decades and each time we've seen this technology being offered to investors the results have been the same. Those people have lost their money.

Surprisingly though, the group at the heart of the tech are still in business and still licensing their ideas to gullible folk who come along and then, in turn, try to raise funds from the public to create a commercially viable outcome.

Inevitably they fail because as far as I can see, the science just does not support the claims being made here.

What am I talking about?

I'm talking about the Air Car, a concept created by Motor Development International (MDI), a company that is long on promises and very short on delivery.

This Wikipedia page gives some info and demonstrates just a little of the failure to deliver the company has become famous for in over a decade of operation.

The last time I gave MDI and the air-car idiocy a mention was back in 2016 when another highly suspicious Kiwi startup called Indranet (which I warned investors away from right from the start) decided to do a pivot after their "mesh network" turned out to be vapourware. (Aardvark Daily from 8 Aug, 2016).

A quick check of the records shows that Russell Fitts, former executive of Indranet is the Executive Chairman "Air Future Ltd" and is still trying to convince Kiwis to throw money at a concept which, it would appear, time has proven to be impractical. Another of the original Indranet founders, Peter McCaulay is also onboard at Air Future, however they seem to have roped in some new faces since the early days and others former on the Indranet executive team have disappeared.

Having failed to raise sufficient capital in the usual way, I see that they're now opting to go the crowdfunding route.

Now I should make it quite clear that I am not a financial advisor and any advice I give here is worth exactly what you're paying for it. However, my track record in tracking and predicting failures in the tech sector is, regular readers will agree, pretty damned good. I predicted Indranet's demise right from the get-go and got it dead right also.

So, I would unreservedly say to anyone considering investing their hard-earned cash in Air Futures Ltd... avoid, avoid, avoid.

We have too many of the same faces, too much of the same hyperbole and yet again that old "air car" hogwash being rolled out, with little more than a new coat of paint and a polish.

Sadly however, I've been watching the pledges to the Air Futures Pledge Me page continue to rise in recent days, showing just how gullible (in my honest opinion) people still are. My only hope is that they don't reach the $200K minimum for those pledges to come due. Even the gullible and stupid don't deserve to waste their money.

I have to wonder -- where is the mainstream media?

Why don't we have real investigative journalists out there who can trawl back through all this history and spot what's going on?

Oh, that's right... the've all been bought off by the government to write wondeful positive stories about things related to The Treaty.

Sigh!

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