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.”
Some body really does need to put a flying car into production. My guess is that a car like this would cost 400,000 to 500,000 thousand dollars to produce. It would be a very limited production item. The manufacture would have to be building it for ego’s sake and not expecting a return on investment (Lamborghini builds tractors, the car is a hobby).
Obviously you won’t see a car like this in an urban area, it belongs in the wide open areas of the Dakotas or Montana.
Tom in cooling Florida (11:27:00) :
“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”?”
Tom,
The “old” Harrier was a “Widow Maker”.
Modern Aircraft are flown with the support of computers making them safer to operate.
The new Joint Strike Fighter also comes as a VTOL version for the US Marines.
A helicopter in principle is also a VTOL.
That’s why it’s popular for many applications.
The negatives are the high operational costs, the high frequency of maintenance, the high fuel consumption and the complexity of the steering system.
The inventor of the AIRSCOOTER has developed an easy to operate (idiot proof) steering concept for a helicopters (http://www.airscooter.com).
But the end product is not appealing unless you are looking for an air scooter.
This is a suckertrap, or at best a loonie’s delusion.
The fact that you can build a flying car in the experimental category does not mean that you can get it certified for flight and driving. Certification is hell, a process costing millions of dollars. Certifying a brand new car from scratch costs tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Small airplanes are a little bit cheaper, but considering the immense complexity of the involved mechanism (how do you certify folding wings, how do you do failure mode analysis on such a complex contraption ?).
Most certified vehicles, which costs millions, are building on the accumulated pre-certification of each part and components. It took years to a friend of mine, an aerospace engineer working for a huge helicopter company, to obtain a Supplemental Type Certificate for a simple bracket to attach an object inside the cowling of a Globe Swift, a simple airplane that was designed in the late forties.
You have NO idea how much the government is intent on not letting the market evolve. They own your life, and are intent to protect it when it suits them…
As for working with the road vehicle regulations, anyone who ever tried to work with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) will understand immediately.
Now, imagine overcoming BOTH aviation and road vehicle standards bundled into one?
HA HA HA HO HO HO HA HA HA HO HO HO…. weep…..
Larey Kerling (08:27:44) :
“Of course this is a no-go idea. A car-boat is much easier to produce, would appeal to many more people, but has never gotten past the novelty stage. A car-plane has no chance of being a serious product”.
Larey, don’t make the mistake of Ken Olsen (DEC) who once stated that there was no market for home computers.
If it’s safe, easy to use, efficient, comfortable, good looking and affordable there will be a market for individual air/road transportation.
we can barely handle two dimensional travel in cars; having three dimensions is well beyond most people’s ability. and rush hour is fairly easy in a car, just hit the brakes and throw in another CD. in an air-car, there’s the problem of stall speed. why are journalists so boneheaded about simple concepts?
Or Bill Gates saying 640k was enough for anyone…
Designed by Nasa? Then I for one will not be buying one!
If God had meant us to drive cars, he would have raised the average IQ.
This is the website of the PALV-V based on the Carver.
These guys solved all the legislative and technical obstacles.
It will be fun to drive and fun to fly at a reasonable price.
http://www.pal-v.com/
Hmmmmm…..eccentrics.
I thought the common consensuses was that most lived in the U.K.
If you can get access to some old 1930’s ,40’s Popular Mechanics or magazines similar these always have technology predictions for the future – 10,20,30,50years etc. A real laugh.
As others have touched upon, combination devices often compromise one function or the other.
This is especially true for things that must move quickly, efficiently, or with agility, such as for boat-cars and car-planes.
No doubt motorcycle-submarines haven’t worked out either.
But there is always some market for novelty or specialized uses. Let those who can spend the money.
papydawg (15:04:19) :
” in an air-car, there’s the problem of stall speed”.
Not necessarily.
The answer to the problem of the stall speed has materialized in the application of the so called “canard”, a small wing in the nose of the aircraft.
This wing stalls first and forces the nose down before the aircraft loses speed.
Modern aircraft designs are very difficult to stall.
VTOL’s, like the Falx Air (http://www.falxair.com/about.html) or the Palv-V don’t have that problem.
If you think winter driving can be fun, try flying cars. Do you have to be instrument rated to take off in a snowstorm?
As an old grizzled engineer once told me, “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”. Applies to a lot of things, not just idiots and their flying cars.
Which places me firmly in the vintage Anthony’s dad column. Oh for a Popular Mechanics of my youth… rare and precious birds in Australia in the 50s.
According to Wikipedia, this vehicle is being developed to meet the FAA’s Light Sport Aircraft requirements. As such, it is subject to less stringent certification requirements and pilot licensing requirements than conventional private aircraft. However, it does still require special licensing to operate and a special facility (i.e. airport) to take off and land. It costs as much as a regular Light Sport Aircraft plus a decent luxury sedan. And the contradictory requirements of an aircraft and a road-going vehicle mean that it will not perform ideally in either configuration. It is hard to imagine that there will be any real market for this vehicle beyond those interested in it for the novelty and with the current state of the economy, it doesn’t seem likely that there are many with $200K to spend on a novelty vehicle. Is it just a coincidence that their website has been suspended by their ISP?
Anthony wrote:
The Amateur Scientist was #2 with me, Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games was my #1 with great stuff like the Soma cube, Pentominoes, hexaflexagons, Conway’s Life. That and Questar telescope ads – there are a number of people who drooled over those in SciAm or Sky & Telescope and finally bought one 40 years later when they could afford it.
Apparently Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, read SciAm as a kid too. It’s nice to know someone else who turned out okay.
It’s a shame what SciAm has become.
It’s not a great aircraft and looks like a really bad car. Not really very good at anything.
Just a toy for the rich. Otherwise it’s a solution looking for a problem.
Too many of the respondents are assuming that grandpa will be able to fly one because he drives a car. Wrong. Not everyone has a pilot’s licence (license y’all) and the ones properly qualified wouldn’t be barging through restricted airspace any more than now. For a production run of several hundred per year (I forget the exact figure) then automotive crash testing is not a requirement and I don’t foresee multi-thousands of these things being built; therefore, it could be built light. I fly a compromise machine – it is both an aircraft and a boat. It handles well enough but loses out in the speed department. Likewise, I would expect a flying car to be optimized for flying and acceptable for traffic driving to the nearest airport. It could not and should not be a Cessna in the sky and a Ferrari on the ground.
I get this message when I try to go to that site :
“Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage”
REPLY: try Firefox, it works better where complex flash scripts are involved and this site has them. IE breaks down a fair amount. I used to use IE almost exclusively, now its FireFox3 – Anthony
Pal-V looks promising.
DaveE.
I predict we will see this car in whatever James Bond film comes out in 2012.
Maybe that will be the one where the plot has the evil mad scientist conspiring to release huge amounts of CO2 form his secret volcanic lair in the tropical Pacific Ocean in an attempt to disrupt the world economy so he can clean up in the carbon trading market.
Fantasy sounds so good until it comes up against reality.
I remember a few decades back reading all about flying cars and planned cities. Fortunately, most people grow out of such delusions.
When I lived near Atlanta I got to experience first hand the joys of a planned community. It was called Peachtree City. All you had to give up were certain freedoms and you too could live in a fairly sterile environment.
I’m 44 years of age and I want to know where the hell is my Jet Pack. I’ve been waiting 35 years .
Now that I am older I have however re-thought the jet pack idea. Unless it was made by Honda or Toyota I am not interested. I do not want an engine failure.
What’s big and gray and sits in a window and hums for 91 days?
An American-made air conditioner with a three-month warrantee.
re: jetpack
Sorry, but the idea of flames so close to my ars just does not appeal to me. Red hair is as close as I want to get to a flame.