Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The global automobile carbon footprint is about to get a significant boost, with the dawn of the age of flying cars.
World’s first flying car to go on sale next month and it could cost more than £300,000
Jasper Hamill
Thursday 27 Sep 2018 9:57 amThe world’s first flying car will be available to pre-order next month. A Chinese company called Terrafugia is preparing to unleash a vehicle called the Transition which can turn from an automobile into an aircraft in just a minute.
It travels at just 100 miles per hour, making it slower than the world’s most sluggish jet, the Soviet PZL M-15 Belphegor which was built to be used on massive state-owned farms. The most striking aspect of the Transition is its folding wings, which extend to allow flight and can be retracted when driving on roads.
It is fitted with a parachute system as well as a ‘boost’ mode to give a ‘brief burst of extra power while flying’. The Chinese news agency Xinhua said pre-sales will begin in October. Terrafugia previously said the Transition would cost $279,000, although a Terrafugia reportedly revised the cost upwards to somewhere between $300k and $400k. This means it could have a price of more than £300,000 in the UK.
‘The Transition is the world’s first practical flying car,’ Terrafugia wrote.
…
Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2018/09/27/worlds-first-flying-car-to-go-on-sale-next-month-7983325/
The following is a video of the Terrafugia in action:
At $400k the first flying car is going to be a luxury item, at least initially. But there are plenty of well paid executives who loathe the daily commute, who might find the option of flying over traffic jams an attractive proposition. And in time, if the Terrafugia is a success, less expensive consumer versions of the flying car might become available.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
In road mode it has hybrid propulsion so greenies should go ecstatic.
However a low-wing with the main landing gear that aft from the center of gravity, not something I’ll like to handle in crosswinds. and.. Ok, that’s not the topic.
I’m afraid it would remain a novelty reserved to the happy few ones with private pilot license, radio operator ticket, valid medical, driver’s license and a fair amount of hours on the dial, able to assume the maintenance costs of an aircraft parked on a supermarket lot.
But, hey, even so it’s much more realistic than the desperate attempts to achieve an electric propulsion flight.
This is a luxury, novelty item.
It is a reality of engineering that any “flying car” will underperform as both a plane and a car. You can’t exactly land in your parking lot, so the only advantage to such a… thing is that you don’t also have to rent a car at whatever airport you fly to. If I’m flying to my cottage out of town, how hard is it to fly a real plane and then get into the Jaguar that keep there in my assigned parking spot there.
And if someone bumps into your “car” while getting groceries, the FAA has to recertify your “car” for flight.
The ultimate problem with “flying cars” is government regulations, not tech.
In nearly every western democracy, driving a “flying car” on surface streets will require a drivers license, and flying the car will require a pilots license and require that you take of and land at approved airports/landing strips, you will get in serious legal trouble if you attempt to launch one of these things from city streets in almost any country.
Yes, must force the little people to grovel to the Department of Motorist Extortion & Privacy Violation. But the Red Chinese Peoples’ Special Transition has that hard-wired in.
The SkyCar worked decades ago, but then the guberment swooped in: all test flights must be tethered, multiple redundancy computer control & routing, yadda yadda yadda. Price still climbing the last I checked. Cousin Harold used to buzz the house in the 1940s & 1950s, I’m told… ane everywhere in chains.
Next up, transporters. Those will make all vehicles obsolete.
Tom in F,
Transporters? How primitive ! Think outside the box — no transportation AT ALL, just all hooked together with tubes, in stasis, living in virtual reality (ala MATRIX). This way we could be at one with the computer models – Om mani padme hum Just re-define some of those words to mean “computer model” — a timeless mixture of spiritual tradition and modern technology.
I nominate Al Gore, Jerry Brown, and most the NY AG as test “drivers” for the first model.
It’s not a real flying car until a dimwit like George Jetson can drive it.
It seems that whoever tries to combine a car with an airplane always ends up with something that is hopelessly unable to perform the function of either very well.
Police chases could be interesting though –
“It travels at just 100 miles per hour, making it slower than the world’s most sluggish jet, the Soviet PZL M-15…”
Of course it’s slower — it’s piston driven.
PZL M-15 was polish actually.
Tty,
Correct. Designed in Poland at Soviet “request”, for use on large collective farms in USSR.
http://www.samolotypolskie.pl/samoloty/2373/126/PZL-M15-Belfegor
In fact most single engine piston trainer planes cruise faster than 100mph. Beech Skipper – 121mph. Cessna 152 – 120 mph. Piper Tomahawk – 115 mph.
World’s First Death by Flying Car to happen next month.
Terrafugia was started many years ago by several MIT alumni and based in Woburn, MA. It was purchased last year by a Chinese conglomerate, so I guess it is technically a chinese company now
Likely was purchased so the intellectual property of the company and any teammates and subcontractors could be examined by the People’s Liberation Army.
Will it be self driving like the car that killed a pedestrian in AZ?
We truly have raised a generation of gullible fools. Attempts to market and sell a car/aircraft began in the 1950’s and the idea is as stupid and impractical today as it has ever been. Pipe dreams. Musk territory.
Who needs driving? What aviation needs is to be more practical. Distributed electric VTOL with conventional engine and prop for cruise will work. No more large airports or taking off and landing at high speed.
See evtol.news
Actually, a long extension cord should do the trick.
Pierre Levegh showed us how safe and practical flying cars can be.
Sigh, yet another media phenomenon, doomed to being irrelevant. Hyped by know-nothing journalists who are not inherently dumb but are almost guaranteed to be ignorant of the realities of engineering.
Where to begin?
It will require a pilots license which is not too difficult to earn, but is a significant investment of time and money.
It will be both a crap car and a crap airplane. A car hauling airplane parts and a plane hauling car parts. The enemy in both cases is weight which kills aircraft performance. One example is the folding wing system, how much does that weigh since every pound added is one less pound of passengers or fuel.
Judging it as an aircraft: How fast? Payload? Fuel burn rate? Range? Servcie ceiling?
And as a car: How safe? Fuel ecomomy? Comfort and convenience? Braking, handling and acceleration? Cruise control? Operation in poor weather? (oops to be more practical you will need it IFR certified and need an IFR rating).
And then there is aircraft maintenance. As a certified aircraft it will need to be maintained to FAA standards by an A&E mechanic. Everything to FAA standards. And that will cost dearly.
400K will buy you both a better car and a better airplane!
I don’t think its the first. I remember seeing a flying car in the Museum of Aviation in Seattle along with film of it flying.
“World’s first flying car.”
Welcome to our new fact free (history doesn’t exist, right?) world. Sorry Molt Taylor, your flying car happened too long ago to be considered real, or something.