In the final part of our five-part interview with serial inventor and flying car advocate Dezso Molnar, he introduces his newest venture: a race series. With more than 100 flying cars on the road and in the air worldwide, Molnar believes the fastest way to take this technology to the next level is to get a community of inventors and aviators together and put their vehicles to the test in a competition on the West Coast of the United States. There'll be categories for radio controlled, electric and unlimited flying cars, so there's room for the full spectrum of innovators.

This week, Molnar has unveiled flyingcarracing.com, a site that brings together the 22 teams that have been invited to participate in the inaugural race in 2017. What follows is Dezso's own words, describing his vision for the event.

On who should get into flying car racing

Racing budgets are massive. People respect racing, and the people that go there – birds of a feather meet at these races. The kinds of people you want to spend your time with if you're a developer. There's value in racing in that it creates a community around these machines and objectives.

The success of Dean Kamen's FIRST project to me is inspiring, in that it has given a lot of kids at a high school level the ability to take their talents for machinery and their fascination, and create a competitive group that lets them work together, meet people from other schools and other nations, and go to these robotics competitions. Dean's best quote is "It's the only sport where every player can turn pro." I'd like to create a similar environment for people out of high school, at the college level or young pros, who are done with school but still want to have that community. There's a FIRST, but currently there's no second.

Flying car racing's for them, because bolting together an aircraft with an electric motor is no big challenge for anybody who has built a FIRST robot with all its control systems. If you compare the Street Wing to Van's aircraft, the Van's planes use gas engines and a thousand more parts than an electric plane, so electrics are much easier to build. Van's has almost 9,000 aluminium planes flying – there's a very robust kit culture for people that want to build their own aircraft parts, and there's a group called the Experimental Aircraft Association which is a strong advocate for them.