All thorough my childhood and adolescence I was a keen fan of all sorts of science magazines including Scientific American (the Amateur Scientist was my favorite SciAm column because it showed how to build things), a subscription magazine from NASA’s Science Service, Asimov’s sci-fi journal, and yes even Popular Science and occasionally Popular Mechanics since my dad liked it.
I lost track of how many times the world has been promised a flying car in those magazines. It seemed like we’d all have a “chicken in every pot” and a flying car in every garage. I’ve been waiting for years decades and there have been lots of false starts and outright frauds. Where the heck is my flying car?
So it was with some amusement that I read this article in the London Time Online. It appears one is being readied for market, we’ll see. I wonder if the ELT on it automatically dials a selection of liability claims attorneys? Even if I had $200k to blow on it, given how regulated we are now, the only place you can fly it “off the road” is Alaska.
World’s first flying car prepares for take-off
Mark Harris
Is it a car? Is it a plane? Actually it’s both. The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month.
If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months’ time.
Its manufacturer says it is easy to keep and run since it uses normal unleaded fuel and will fit into a garage.
Carl Dietrich, who runs the Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, said: “This is the first really integrated design where the wings fold up automatically and all the parts are in one vehicle.”
The Transition, developed by former Nasa engineers, is powered by the same 100bhp engine on the ground and in the air.
Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph. Up to now, however, it has been tested only on roads at up to 90mph.
Dietrich said he had already received 40 orders, despite an expected retail price of $200,000 (£132,000).
“For an airplane that’s very reasonable, but for a car that’s very much at the high end,” he conceded.
There are still one or two drawbacks. Getting insurance may be a little tricky and finding somewhere to take off may not be straightforward: the only place in the US in which it is legal to take off from a road is Alaska.
Dietrich is optimistic. He said: “In the long term we have the potential to make air travel practical for individuals at a price that would meet or beat driving, with huge time savings.”
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It’s not the world’s first:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7821979.stm
Someone is setting off from London to Timbuktu in one this week
I do not believe in the concept of a fixed wing flying car that is in need of a runway for take off and landing and I certainly would not fly this horrible looking cookey.
Such a craft should be a VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing)
Currently there are two promising developments:
The closest thing between driving and flying based on the Carver, the PALV-5:
http://www.gizmag.com/go/3323/
The second option: http://www.falxair.com/about.html
Forget about Möller and his Sky Car.
In regard to safe operation and navigation:
The “Freeflight” flight management system based on GPS and on line navigation computers that connect to an auto pilot will make safe “all weater” flights possible without the risk of mid air collisions.
The three dimensional flight path is projected on a screen or a HUD and all the pilot has to do is to steer the craft along the path.
Or, if he is in a lazy mood, enter the flight destination into the computer and let the auto pilot do the job.
The Palve project has involved Government departments and a Police participation in order to study the legal implementation of this kind of new technology.
On thing is for sure.
The shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line.
Therefore transport by air has the future.
The Möller Sky Car is a HOAX.
“The shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line.
Therefore transport by air has the future.”
Wrong, trains in tunnels would be the real shortest distance. Unless you want to go from the top of building A to the top of Building B.
Evacuated tunnels with mag-lev trains would also allow for much higher speeds than any flying machine, if properly done.
I was in a flying car once.
Not by choice.
But the flight was short.
And everyone lived.
Forget fixed wing cars. I want one of these: . (Sadly, their test flights and world tours seem to always be planned for a couple of years from Now…)
Ron de Haan (11:02:03) : “Such a craft should be a VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing)”
Ummmmm, don’t experienced USMC pilots call a Harrier “The Widow Maker”?
Just what we need. Let’s turn what are fender benders on the road into life altering events due to vehicles falling out of the sky
Tom,
Yes, they do and we called the CH-46 helicopter “Flying coffins” and LST amphib transport ships “large, slow, targets”. Marines have a macabre sense of humor. We enjoy gallows humor. 🙂
God, I remember reading about the Moller Skycar back in 80’s when it was featured in a grade school magazine (when it was being called the Volantor). That was supposed to be VTOL. I’m starting to side with Ron above that it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s been, what, 40 years now since it was proposed? It can’t be that difficult to get a working model up and running, is it? I have a feeling SpaceShip One got up and running with far less capital.
PM (10:55:37) : “It’s not the world’s first:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7821979.stm
Someone is setting off from London to Timbuktu in one this week”
He’ll be lucky to make Timbukwun, unless he has a convoy of support vehicles.
Bill Marsh (11:36:36) : “Yes, they do and we called the CH-46 helicopter “Flying coffins” and LST amphib transport ships “large, slow, targets”. Marines have a macabre sense of humor. We enjoy gallows humor. 🙂
Yes we do. Although we also referred to the older tanks we had as “Coffins; green with yellow markings”. Semper Fi
So long, folks, I’m off to work: click
And then there’s the erstwhile gyrocopter.
Another advantage to piloting a flying car is that teenagers can take their hands off the controls and text in three dimensions.
[Interesting gyrocopter article]
Better to have your hopes vested in the mythical “Back to the Future” hoverboard than a flying car.
And to think I thought that thing was real and parent’s groups were blocking Mattel from selling them. Ah, I used to be so gullible before Al Gore invented the internet.
I remember reading an article in Flying about the Taylor Areocar when I was in high-school in the 60’s. According to wikipedia 6 were built and one first flew in 1949. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerocar
There was another attempt in late 60’s to create a flight module to attach to an existing car described in ‘Popular Science’ or ‘Science and Mechanics.’ It was pictured attached to a Pontiac GTO as I recall – a flying muscle car. I heard a radio news broadcast that it crashed on its first flight killing the test pilot.
Another firm seems to by trying this again with a Lotus Elise. http://www.aerocar.com/
As a former flight instructor I never thought the concept made much sense. To many compromises to effectively perform either the driving or flying mission safely.
El Santo (11:39:09) :
God, I remember reading about the Moller Skycar back in 80’s when it was featured in a grade school magazine (when it was being called the Volantor). That was supposed to be VTOL. I’m starting to side with Ron above that it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s been, what, 40 years now since it was proposed? It can’t be that difficult to get a working model up and running, is it?
I had the unfortunate opportunity to attend school where Moller was running his PR Campaign. He, IMHO, was never interested in making a working vehicle, only in getting enough PR to retain funding from his department. He would show just enough progress to make the papers and get renewed.
He’s using the same pitch now that he used in the ’70s. He’s been through several variations and done some interesting inventing / engineering: but don’t ever make the mistake of thinking he actually wants to succeed at flying this thing. His present model is, as far as I can tell, functional in flight. He keeps it on ropes near the ground when ‘demonstrating it’ so that there is no risk of bad press from an accident or lousy performance characteristics. He knows that would kill the gravy train. If he was really interested in flying this thing, he’d have a test pilot (with chute) take it out to Edwards…
Gee, hyped ‘science’ to retain funding… why does that sound familiar?
Per the other flying cars: There have been several, this one isn’t the first.
Per flying cars in general: When it doesn’t take a year+ and a few thousand dollars to get a pilots license they might have a niche market. I do want to know how they intend to make it past the automotive & aircraft government mandated tests (Crash, smog, etc.) It’s hard enough to get cars to pass, and the personal / light aircraft market is basically dead thanks to ‘regulations’. It is not an accident that all the interesting advances are going on in the ultralight / experimental licensing categories where you can make an aircraft without a few million dollars for FAA ‘testing’.
Honda could make a personal sized passenger plane for about the cost of a nice sedan, if it were not for two things: All the regulatory load and the resultant micro sized market crushing any economy of scale. The result is aircraft with price tags like houses and folks who would like to have a pilots license but just give up. (How many of you know folks who had licenses and let them laps because keeping current was just too much trouble? I know a couple…) Heck, just the avionics costs as much as a luxury car.
It’s a nice dream, though, and always will be…
Who would have thought. 3D gridlock.
A flying car is certainly possible to build (it has been done, repeatedly), but it would not be a very good aircraft and it would be an abysmal and probably very dangerous car.
It would have to be a reasonably good aircraft in order to get certified for flying, and this would automatically make it a rotten car. Well, I mean adequate stabilty margins, good spin and stall characteristics, a reasonable wing loading, ample control authority etc etc isn’t usually the kind of thing you build into a car, and I definitely wouldn’t like to fly in an aircraft that had been built to survive motorway chrashes rather than turbulence.
Better (and cheaper) to buy a car *and* an aircraft.
I think this: http://www.gizmag.com/go/7135/
is much more interesting than Moller or any other ‘someday maybe’ thing…
BTW, notice that one of the salient points raised about the other gizmag autogyro above AND an advantage of 3 wheel (therefor ‘motorcycles’) is the lessened regulatory / licensing burden… That is the real problem, not the technology of flight.
This is a classic example of the obvious, but bad, idea. Putting a car and plane together might work if you could start all over with new infrastructure, but you can’t. Rather than coming up with a good NEW idea, some people chase the same old BAD idea to death. How did that car that drives into the water work out?
I think there is a market for these. I know a few aviation hobbyists and hanger fees are a huge expense. I am not sure but I think all you would need is an experimental aircraft qualified pilot’s license (like my father in law uses to fly his KR2) and you would be good to go. If it is really street legal to get to and from private airstrips and can be stored in a standard garage it would bring some big advantages to the hobbyist.
If properly done they would run from my house to anywhere I want to go and be available anytime I want to go. Not a snowball’s chance of that.
“and LST amphib transport ships “large, slow, targets”
aka, Last Ship There, or Lotta Sick Troops.
Ah, Marines are so quaint and parochial 😉
Go Army!
HHT 2/11 ACR 1981-1983 “Eaglehorse!”
Retired Engineer (08:18:38) :
“Years back, someone made a car that was a boat as well. It didn’t do well in either function”.
Wrong, the perfect water car, build by Gibbs Technologies called Aquada, although expensive, is for sale now.
http://www.gibbstech.co.uk/aquada.php
And Gibbs is not alone.
In the USA the “Watercar” is produced, based on the Chevrolet Camaro.
This car too performs perfectly on the road as well in the water.
I am confident that the equivalent of a flying car is viable as well.
However not if it looks like the “Bambino Fiasco” posted by Anthony.
Where is your sense for technological adventure?
Ed (11:15:46) :
“The shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line.
Therefore transport by air has the future.”
“Wrong, trains in tunnels would be the real shortest distance. Unless you want to go from the top of building A to the top of Building B.
Evacuated tunnels with mag-lev trains would also allow for much higher speeds than any flying machine, if properly done”.
Ed,
You are right but a Maglev is mass public transportation.
It’s expensive and it’s not available.
The dream of the flying car is the ultimate in individual transportation (freedom)
which should appeal to any American.
I am confident that practical applications will be for sale in the near future.