I think eliminating human pilots is a big part of making a "flying car" practical. There's no way I want the half of all drivers that are already below average to leap into the sky.

So far, that theory hasn't worked too well for Tesla or Uber. The airplane part is easy -- just any airline pilot how much time they spend in manual control. It's the driving part.

Many years away.

 

Many years away

I'd say a couple of decades ...

 

It's not just the car. To be practical and economical, air traffic control would have to be taken to an unbelievably higher level. There's currently about 150,000 piston-driven general aviation aircraft in the United States, which is the rough analog for flying cars. The vast majority of these aircraft are flown only occasionally. In contrast, there are well over 200 million passenger vehicles in the U.S. and a significant fraction of them are driven on a near daily basis. Currently ATC philosophy is largely based on the "big-sky, little-plane" concept in which the emphasis is placed on the collector points -- the airfields. That approach simply won't work with a thousand or more fold increase in the density of vehicles and an explosion in widely dispersed collector points.

 

I just read this article, and I seriously doubt this company will ever get off the ground (financially speaking) if the end product looks anything like the main picture:

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/scienc...-long-wait-flying-cars-almost-over-ncna919211

 

Commercial Air services might look at it, you could land then put it in the parking lot and take the train to work avoiding traffic jams all together.

We have a train that leaves the airport straight to downtown SLC. It would make commuting way easier theoretically speaking.

kv

 

Commercial Air services might look at it, you could land then put it in the parking lot and take the train to work avoiding traffic jams all together.

We have a train that leaves the airport straight to downtown SLC. It would make commuting way easier theoretically speaking.

kv

I don't know ... personally, I think that the ordinary business model of plane-car duality makes no economic sense. A plane's maintenance is an expensive, meticulous and nuanced process. So as you use that vehicle as a car, the airplane parts suffer wear and age too.
Perhaps it could work as an easy to store, fly on demand small plane. Small airports with small hangars could be built around the place for a fraction of the cost of traditional ones. And with a high volume of traffic that could turn it into a profitable enterprise.

 

This small heli-drone looks like a rather nice piece of engineering:

https://www.usatoday.com/picture-ga...tories&utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral

 

This is flat out insane, even coming from Mr Musk himself:

https://electrek.co/2019/01/09/tesla-roadster-hover-off-the-ground-elon-musk/amp/

Elon Musk has been making some crazy claims about the next generation Tesla Roadster, but now he is topping them off with a claim that it will actually be able to hover over the ground.

 

 

This is flat out insane, even coming from Mr Musk himself:

https://electrek.co/2019/01/09/tesla-roadster-hover-off-the-ground-elon-musk/amp/

Old news:

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremy...osits-battery-fires-boeing-cora/#2319cac358ab
Inside Larry Page’s Turbulent Kitty Hawk: Returned Deposits, Battery Fires And A Boeing Shakeup

 

Ever since times immemorial, people's wish to fly to and back from whatever errand they have in mind has been an irresistible thought. Many attempts have been made at a flying car, but all have failed miserably. My view is that those failures have been mainly due to the requirement of special abilities from the driver (pilot) to handle such a vehicle, and from economic factors, such as cost and, mainly, maintenance.

I wonder, have all of the technological hurdles finally been overcome, so that the industry will finally be able to provide an easy-to-use, affordable flying car?

 

This is not what could be called a "flying car", but rather a personal VTOL recreational vehicle. Still, its compact size and easy maneuverability makes it an impressive vehicle:

 

If those come to be real and available to the public, I think my kids just lost any chance of inheriting what ever they cost! It almost looked like something created in CGI until it went over the desert and blew up the sand/dust.

 

 

If those come to be real and available to the public, I think my kids just lost any chance of inheriting what ever they cost! It almost looked like something created in CGI until it went over the desert and blew up the sand/dust.

It's real alright:

This Personal eVTOL Comes in a DIY Kit with a Flight Speed of 63 Mph
​

 

Well guess that price tag is out of my range. I wish my oldest son lived closer, he lives in Georgia. For the last year or so he's been talking about building a gyro copter, like in the Mad Max movie, and this would be much cooler than one of those.

 

Well guess that price tag is out of my range. I wish my oldest son lived closer, he lives in Georgia. For the last year or so he's been talking about building a gyro copter, like in the Mad Max movie, and this would be much cooler than one of those.

Much cooler indeed ... but I'm afraid it will also have a much more limited range. Probably only half an hour, or less ... I haven't looked it up, to tell you the truth.

 

Flying cars are dangerous.

 

Flying cars are dangerous.

wet blanket...