What happened to the flying car?

I'm just thinking to myself right now "what happened to the flying car?" The way the media was pushing the movement a couple years back, you'd think we'd all be flying them by now. To date I haven't seen one flying car in the sky,nor have I seen any infrastructure being put into place for any flying car development. I checked booth Terrafugia and Moller's websites and both say that their currently doing flight-testing. This sounds weird especially since I am under the understanding that Terrafugia is a lot farther along than Moller is. What's going on?

Dude, where's my flying car?


moller.com...

www.terrafugia.com...

reply to post by lostbook


DUDE! Where is my flying car?! I would love to have a flying car. That would be awesome because I could fly over long distances instead of driving through traffic and long labyrinths type neighborhoods. A lot of privet companies should put money in funding the study and ultimately unveiling of the flying cars on the market. I know there would be safety concerns and what not. However, it would be cool just to have one. "VRRRRM!" I'm flying awesome! haha.

There are a few reasons I could think of, why a flying car isn't going to be very common anytime soon:

Cost- You can get a cheap used car for under $1,000. At least everywhere I've driven, a huge portion of the cars on the road are older cheaper cars. A flying car would likely be out of the price range for the vast majority of drivers.

Safety- Air travel may be safer than car travel according to the stats, but that's because air travel is tightly controlled and the skies aren't anywhere near as crowded as the streets. The process to be able to fly a flying car would likely be at LEAST as difficult and expensive as getting a normal small plane license, something that is again out of reach for most people.

If your car fails generally you just get upset because you need a tow truck. If your flying car fails, you'll likely die. And while a driver can hit other motorists or buildings immediately by the street, someone in a flying car could go crashing through tall buildings, falling on homes, etc. if you have several million flying cars up there, odds are you are going to get a lot of people killed and injured by flying/falling debris.

There is also the ease of driving compared to flying. There are just tons of reasons why flying cars aren't really that feasible for most people, and if they aren't feasible for most people, it likely won't happen. There is no point in installing infrastructure and policy for flying cars when only .001% of people are going to be using them.

I think George Jetson got shot down by a Patriot while running from a Reaper.

Poor guy... Took the only set of plans for the flying car with him when he became a lawn dart. All that might have been....

reply to post by lostbook


Holy cats---can you imagine the carnage? People are too stupid to drive as it is---and we're supposed to let them fly the damn things? I'm out until they build anti-gravity into them, so, in case of failure, they just sort of stick there in a "safety stratum" a couple hundred feet up. Or something.

Now, jetpacks. I'm down with jetpacks....

LOL The flying car...

imagine a dumb kid texting #YOLO as he speeds, drunk in his flying car.

Was cool as heck in back II the future... Yet I wouldn't trust most humans with driving one.

Top Gear covered the topic...

www.topgear.com...

reply to post by DistantThunder


Top Gear focused more on the Space-Travel side of the flying car...

Well, it's pretty unwieldy, so you won't see any.

We were actually recruited by Moller to do the nav system. We took a look at it and refused. Good luck riding this thing.

I'd be waaaay more down for the oceanic-capable submersible that looks like a ferrari when it's not shooting through the water at 200mph.

Submarine cars with highbeams, that's what i'm talking about

Well they've obviously not even started building the flying roads.. What do you think they're going to fly on?

Oo

reply to post by winofiend


I want a flying road.

reply to post by lostbook

What happened to the flying car?

It's here....

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by piequal3because14


I want a Cathodic Car!

reply to post by Theflyingweldsman

I want a Cathodic Car!

You'll have it ,in the near future.

Here's another quite promising concept:
www.urbanaero.com

But what does promising mean in this context? The proposals come and go, funding is usually in place for a couple of years and then these things disappear again ... it's a shame, isn't it?

But damn: I also want my flying car ... !!



P.S.: I know, it's not really a flying car, but the concept comes pretty close I think ...

The Moller 200 X is the only style I like.



But I might replace it's 8 'noisy' Wankle Rotary Engines, with 'quiet' Ionic Thrusters... if they continue developing this technology:

"Thrusters powered by ionic wind may be efficient alternative to conventional atmospheric propulsion technologies"
phys.org... ternative.html

Otherwise... I wait for a Jetpack.

I remember JohnnyAnonymous being miffed/pissed about this (I really like him for some odd reason, the old goat).

I doubt we will ever see a flying car. I hope we don't see any where I live, where the BMW and Lexus roam a little too free. It's scary enough dealing with the privileged. I'm sure the hover thing has been done, it's just the braking/handling/not veering off into traffic thing I doubt we have down. I went to the Museum Of Flight near Seattle a few times with my Dad and there was a little kiosk (meh?) that showed a vehicle about the size of a phone booth (chopped in half, so picture a phone booth that was around waist high) that could raise a soldier about 30 feet in the air. I really want one. I also just searched for a video and couldn't find one though I have seen it on YouTube.

My car flies a little low, and I would recommend her sisters to anyone that wants a vehicle on rails that does 0-60 in less than 5 seconds, has 4 doors and has a high safety rating. I wake up "shifting" at night sometimes. Vrooom. It feels like she flies.

First of all, I love the idea of a flying car. The idea that you could get up in the air, and be free of solid, ground planted obstacles, other motorists (which account for a significant percentage of the reason I do not drive) and pedestrians stumbling drunkenly into the road is very appealing. Such a contraption would save transit time for commuter purposes, and lets face it, taking your date out in a ride with turbo fans and VTOL is bound to be more impressive than pulling perfect handbrake turns around a roundabout (TopGear reference there people). I mean honestly, thats 007 territory. You would be forever looking in your side mirrors trying to spot Daniel Craig following you, with the intention of pimp slapping you out of your ride over a copyright issue.

But there are some significant problems with the idea also. For a start, in a nation like Britain, we have limited airspace. That may sound idiotic, but we do have some of the busiest airports in Europe operating on this tiny island. Also, we have air ambulances, police choppers, and various military airbases, over and around which, training missions are flown. Also, if this idea were to catch on to the same degree as cars have over the years, it would be virtually impossible to police the use of these things effectively and within a sensible budget.

Then you have the cost of fuel, leave alone the vehicle itself. The fuel required to run a vehicle which is designed to fly, will always be greater than the cost of fuel for a ground car. The simple reason for this, is that even the most sophisticated aircraft use the bulk of thier fuel when taking off, and controlling thier landing. Simply getting of the ground is pricey in terms of fuel costs, whereas setting off in a car is no where near as difficult or fuel heavy.

Also, one of the designs currently in development requires Ethanol fuel. But ethanol is actually less energy dense than standard petrol, and causes corrosion to parts which are not specifically designed to be used with that fuel. So why would anyone want to use it? Because it is less energy dense, one has to carry more of it to get the same amount of work done, and because it can be corrosive, one is limited in terms of the materials that can be used to contain, pump and burn it. Seems hinky to me.

Also, car insurance here in the UK is bloody astronomical. It is insane. Between genuinely poor drivers, and scammers trying to make a fast and easy score from the insurance companies, it is often the case that a years insurance will cost more than the bloody car does, certainly if you buy second hand, and its your first car (which accounts for the remainder of the reason why I have not, and may never, learn to drive). Therefore, since there is no way in the world, that one of these flying cars would be cheaper than your typical ground based runabout, the insurance would be crippling. I mean the damn things FLY for crying out loud! If there was ever a contraption which would require a very careful risk assessment before being cleared for use, its something which contains fuel, produces thrust, and could fall on someones head if incorrectly used, poorly maintained, or through an "act of God".

And one more thing now I think about it. A flying car should be as sleek and road huggingly brutal as the gnarliest rubber hoofed road monster that ever screamed around a bend , and as elegant as any aerobatic, dive bombing barnstormer ever to pierce a cloud. Unless the result of all this tinkering is going to be a car which drives like a Buggati Veyron, and flies like an SR-71 blackbird, I really cannot see them making a go of it.

reply to post by Theflyingweldsman


Ahhaha too good.

Brilliant I love that.. haha