Terrafugia Transition

Sort of an aircraft project, since it flies, but the Transition by Terrafugia has made its first flight. The Massachusetts based company revealed that it made the first flight March 5th. It's a $200,000 aircraft that will fly 100 knots, and 400nm, then land and drive at highway speeds for land based travel.

The wings will fold straight up along the side of the car for driving on land. It gets 30mpg on the road, and has a 430 pound cargo capacity, with a 27' 6" wingspan.

Flying Car

www.terrafugia.com...

www.ridelust.com...
mediaindonesia.com...

And Air Traffic Controolers everywhere suddenly get a sick feeling in the pit of their stomaches.

Almost a good idea, but I can see problems with this vehicle.
First off , the 'car' part - will get a spanking from the yobs in your local area for looking daft.
Has to pass various safety guidelines in the event of an accident or road crash.
Any small knock would ( supermarket ding etc) would render it useless for flight capabilities.

Now the 'Flyer' part, yes training would be great, but 20 hours? not long enough to learn what you really need to know.
In a city environment unless you know an area well enough for 'average' traffic flow you 'd have to land at a nearby airfield before driving home or to work or even to the shops. Could cause problems for fuel consumption, and waste time commuting.
Trying to land on a straight road is great if you have them clear enough, in the UK that is a total NO GO.

Don't get me wrong I wholeheartedly support and understand the companies for making these vehicles but until a VTOL ( Vertical Take Off and Landing ) version is created this vehicle serves no geneuine 'civilian' consumer purpose.
Fair play to Terrafugia for at least trying.

It meets all safety standards for a ground vehicle, and has all the safety equipment that your car does.

As for dings, aircraft fly with dings all the time. I've had -135s come back with huge dents in their leading edges (nose, wings, tail) that flew just fine.

This would only require a sport license, which is why it only needs 20 hours. It's designed to fly into any airport with at least 2500 feet, most of which are uncontrolled. ATC won't even deal with them in most cases, because they'll fly VFR under 18,000 feet, so they don't need to file a flight plan, and they'll fly most of their flights through uncontrolled airspace.

The idea is that you drive to an airfield, take off, land at an airfield, then drive to wherever you're going. This is a great idea for the 100-500 mile crowd. You don't have to pay all that money to buy a commercial ticket, wait for them to get you there, then get transportation once you're there. With ticket prices for short flights being utterly absurd, this is a great idea for that crowd.

Thanks for clarifying the details for me.
2nd line
and ooh look, a 3rd.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Imagine the 80 people that would be on the commercial jet trying to make it into land on a runway indivudualy. I dont think its a good idea to have individual planes for everyone. They have developed virtual highways useing gps. You could easily have a computer pick out a flight path for you as to avoid the other 1000 people going to the same place you are.

I dont think anyone other than the rich will have a vehicle like this.

With a $200,000 price tag, I don't think we'll see these in any kind of large numbers any time soon. There's not really a huge group of people that would really benefit from them for anything but fun, with only a 400nm range. I suspect that some of the owners will buy them for novelty more than anything.

sorry to resurrect an old thread. i found this update as i was browsing.

The team over at Terrafugia, the company developing the Transition Roadable Aircraft (aka the Flying Car) has been given permission to gain some extra pounds. The company has been working hard to overcome the persistent issue of how to build a safe enough car, that can still be light enough to compete with the other aircraft in its class. But the ambitious design still came in too heavy to qualify as a Light Sport Aircraft.

Link

reply to post by Zaphod58


Huh - I routinely drive about 150 or so miles. Both municipal airports where I typically go would fit this type of thing just fine.

Now, if only they could price it so a trade-in '09 corolla would cover it...

But at $200K, it would probably be cheaper to have two different cars and a private sport aircraft. At least for travel between two fixed destinations. If you just want to go hop-scotching around, it would probably be worth it if you could afford it.

I can imagine these things crashing into housing developments everywhere

but want one anyway,what can I say,you don't know me but I've been waiting for my flying car since I can remember


obviously something like this isn't for taking the kids to soccer practice ,but I still like it