HomeComputingMobileInternetGamingElectronicsExtremeDealsExtremeTechExtremeThe great flying car dream: With Terrafugia, Toyota, and Musk on board, has their time finally come?The great flying car dream: With Terrafugia, Toyota, and Musk on board, has their time finally come?By Bill Howard on June 19, 2014 at 11:27 amComment
Share This articleThe flying car is the little engine that couldn’t. Yet. They’ve been on the cover of magazines since the end of World War II. Henry Ford built a flying Flivver in the 1920s. Terrafugia is the current standard bearer; prototypes have flown but none have shipped. Elon Musk might build a flying car, he says, and he’s a man who has built rocket ships, so for him maybe it’s not rocket science. The one thing flying cars haven’t done is become a commercial product.
The flying car business has three segments. The most successful is writing about flying cars being just around the corner; this has been a staple of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science when Truman was President. Then there’s writing that flying cars will never fly; that’s solid, too, the latest being “Flying Cars: The Idea That Will Not Die” in IEEE Spectrum. The third and weakest leg is building and selling them. With the recent advent of lighter composite materials, there still may be hope — but so far, it feels like flying cars might be like fusion power: always just a few years away.
Terrafugia has “roadable planes” flying, just not for saleTerrafugia is the company that has come closest to building and selling a flying car. Based in Woburn, MA, outside Boston, it was founded in 2006. Terrafugia is Latin for escape from earth. The Terrafugia Transition first escaped the runway in 2009 for brief takeoff-landings and has been test-flown since. Terrafugia’s current thinking is to ship the first Transitions in 2015 or 2016. The price is listed at just under $300,000, about the same as the Cessna 172, the most popular airplane built. That begs the question, is the Transition underpriced, or maybe the Cessna is overpriced? Either way, Terrafugia reports more than 100 deposits for the Transition.
Just about everyone calls these things flying cars. Terrafugia prefers “roadable aircraft.” It’s not really intended to be flown 250 miles today and driven 250 miles tomorrow. Rather, Terrafugia envisions the owner and a passenger flying to a small airport near the final destination, folding the wings up, switching the engine from the propeller to the wheels and driving — high-speed taxiing? — the last 10 miles or so to the hotel or vacation cabin. That this fugitive from earth flies at all is also because of exemptions granted by airplane and car safety regulators on takeoff weight, windshield material, stability control, and airbag sophistication.
Terrafugia says it plans to follow on, circa 2021, with the TF-X, a tilt-wing rotor flying car with a plug-in hybrid powerplant (video above).
Other flying cars, loosely defined
Elon Musk, talking to a British newspaper recently, said “Maybe we’ll make a flying car, just for fun.” Later in the same conversation he accurately points out that, while he could easily make a flying car, the technology isn’t there to make a good flying car. “The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that’s super safe and quiet? Because if it’s a howler, you’re going to make people very unhappy.”
The very first “flying car” was the Ford Flivver, a play on the Model T Flivver (flivver being slang for a cheap or rough car), but otherwise just a tiny, low-cost plane with a 15-foot wingspan that flew in 1926. It was briefly test-flown by Charles Lindbergh, who reportedly called it one of the worst planes he ever flew. The Flivver killed its test pilot in a 1928 flight to Florida, at which point Ford ended the project.
Then there are cars you can drive into the water. James Bond drove a Lotus Esprit that was a submarine in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me. That actually was a heavily modified Esprit, not computer graphics, under water. The car was recently purchased by Elon Musk. Shades of six degrees.
In the 1960s, the German Amphicar, a two-seat convertible sports car, could be driven directly into the water and twin propellers pushed it at 7 knots; the front wheels provided steering. Critics said it was dangerous and prone to swamping, though one did cross the English Channel. Production was meant to be geared up to build 20,000 a year, but in the end less than 4,000 were built over four years before the factory shut down.
Despite IEEE Spectrum’s gloomy forecast for flying cars in 2007 as “a flimsy car and a feeble airplane” and again this year, the flying car might still happen. Terrafugia is further along than any of the dozens of prototypes cobbled together in the past century.
If the flying car, or roadable plane, does come to market in quantity, it helps that buyers not think about this in a practical matter. If you can afford $300,000 for a Terrafugia Transition or Cessna 172, you can afford to rent a car at the airport where you land, and if the airport is too small to have cars for rent, you can afford to have someone bring you a car, or keep a car there.
Tagged In carsautosteslacar techelon muskairplanesToyotatransportationflying carstransportterrafugiatransitionTF-XPopular SciencePopular MechanicsShare This Article .article {margin:0px !important;}.AR_1 {margin :0 0 20px 0 !important;}.AR_2 {margin:0 0 20px 0;} CommentPost a Comment Matt MenezesAt first, I couldn’t see the propellers in the picture at the top, so I was like, “how does that generate enough lift?!?”
ShanieOneillnuclike
Jacqueline implied I’m taken by surprise that a mom can earn $8130 in 1 month
on the computer . see post Fiscalpost.COM
We have enough accidents on the groud – let’s not let people fly through the air causing havoc too.
Stacey BrightYes, this is real barrier to entry of flying cars. The system designed to regulate drivers is fairly autonomous, air traffic not so much. There would have to be a massive infrastructure overhaul to the transportation system. The process for acquiring a drivers license, is also a lot less involved (and cheaper) than getting a pilots license. That alone so greatly reduces the potential user base, that flying cars would barely be marketable. The target demographic would basically be people that already own and fly Cessnas.
However in this imaginary future of flying cars, if they re-purpose retired military aircraft as aerial police interceptors, I’m signing up day one.
dcinstead of a flying car researched should be focused on deliverable catapults which launch people to their destination where perhaps they could use a parachute to slow down, or maybe not.
Marc GuillotThe Futurama Tube Transport System :-), that’s the future.
I_know_a_thing_or_twoThat sounds like fun! Of course if two people, launched in opposite directions happen to have intersecting trajectories….
DustinALedonneTerrafugia is further along than any of the dozens of prototypes cobbled together in the past century. http://sn.im/290xdj8
ZunalterAs cool as it would be to fly to work in the winter and not have to worry about icy roads, I think I will just pine for driverless car tech instead since the near-term practicality is much greater.
MaxWhy these will never really take off is obviously not the price. Its the fear of death at your own hands!
APOIwhat extreme ugly looking Car with even more urgy sounding name terrafugia what kind of Terra-fucKia name it is !!!
APOIAeroMobil is way much more better looking FlyCar then Terrafugia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPNIPCalM6s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plNO7fntQkY
97point6Can’t think of any brighter future than being surrounded by my fellow commuters three thousand feet in the air.
APOI.
Marc GuillotA car- helicopter seems to me more feasible than a car-plane.
Michael ClappYes a Cessna 172 is too expensive at 300K. Of course the reality is that you can buy essentially the same airplane used with different avionics for 40K. Plus the older one would probably carry more weight due to being lighter.
The idea of landing and then driving away while appealing isn’t that practical since the Terrafugia is a mediocre two person car. I’m far better off most of the time leaving a beater at the airport and flying a cheaper yet better aircraft for the cost. I did it for 6 years with a Cessna T210 that cost 100K and a Chevy Blazer. Both held my family of four and 100lb dog along with all their stuff and the plane would easily cruise at 160 knots for 4+ hours.
Ivor O’ConnorI want an AWD Tesla Model S with Super Draco methane jets and an autopilot that could fly in all weather conditions.
PiotrWell, there is PAL-V – tilting motocycle / gyrocopter combo. It looks more compelling than this contraption.
flitetymA “flying car” or “roadable airplane” is a very silly idea. GA is a very mature and sophisticated industry if only because it is required to comply with Federal regulatory codes in manufacturing, inspection, training, insurance and consumables. To think an entirely new type of personal transport can elude that environmental burden and its costs — while maintaining some remote semblance of utility — is simply “pie in the sky.”
Pun intended.
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