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Gyroplanes are wickedly cool - the sad thing is, every single time someone comes up with a "roadable aircraft" like the PAL-V https://www.pal-v.com/ it turns into something so expensive that it will always remain a rich-person's toy.

And with respect to the "flying car" of the original article? 30 minutes flight time my ass. The number of lipo batteries you'd need to carry in order to lift a human out of ground effect for 30 minutes would be ridiculously heavy and take a day and a half to charge. Unless there is an order of magnitude improvement in battery power density with a drastic reduction in weight - us flying around in a bunch of quadcopters is little more than a bullshit pipe dream like Moller's "Sky Car".

See, that's the thing. I have a friend that does exactly that - but he went one step further and just parked a small no-frills car at the airport and leaves it there. I'm always surprised at how easy it is to get in and out of small GA airports. But again - it ain't cheap by any stretch. "Save Money" and "Own a Plane" are never two things that live together well - but I will say it's damned convenient with the scenario you describe. In the Terrafugia I would just be too damn worried of getting my wings pranged by some idiot driver while trying to get to the runway. One small accident will erase every gain you might have had by not having to tie down your plane at the airport. And forget the accident - a small piece of debris or pothole will incur some substantial A&P time...

The flying cars try to do both things well (fly and drive) and are good at neither. Of course the definition of "well" is subjective. I live in Albuquerque - and to me the test would be what are the performance numbers of something that can take off at a runway that's about 7K ASL already and 100 degrees in the summer. Those pie-in-the-sky numbers manufacturers try to play to don't exist in real life.

And if I want to go sub-100MPH in a plane that drives I'd just get the PAL-V here http://pal-v.com/the-pal-v-one... Reminds me of a "canyon carver" and gyro rolled into one. Again even this is WAY too expensive and has similar suck-numbers for useful load after gas in the tank - but does look like a lot of fun - but it too suffers from the "Oh dear god don't let the idiot without insurance hit my plane!"

Flying -- with the notable exception of lighter-than-air such as gasbags -- is too energy intensive to be consumer-level practical at this point in time

From the article: "The machine [Pal-V], which had its first test in early 2012, is able to travel around 560km (350 miles) on one tank of fuel" ... that doesn't sound that absurdly terrible to me, especially considering you'd be able to fly faster than you could drive on the road, and presumably wouldn't have to worry about the damn traffic.

http://pal-v.com/the-pal-v-one/specifications/

The video from the companies website, http://pal-v.com/, states that many attempts have been made to make flying cars. Looks like a lot of those attempts fly just fine. Guess they don't have access to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_car_(aircraft) Terrafugia is one of the more modern flying car contenders: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/8445752/flying-car-cleared-for-takeoff

So, they make an article about a flying car, but don't include a single photo of it?!
http://pal-v.com/the-pal-v-one/styling-and-design/

no wings.
but the rotor blades automatically fold back.

http://pal-v.com/the-pal-v-one/transformation/
Converting the PAL-V ONE from airplane to automobile is a very easy process which takes about 10 minutes. Once the engine stops, the propeller folds itself automatically into the driving position. Pushing a button then lowers the rotor mast into the horizontal position. The same motion lowers the tail. The outer blades are folded over the inner blades via hinge mechanisms. The last steps in the process are to push the tail into its driving position and secure the rotor blades. This conversion can be executed by the driver/pilot after just a short training lesson. To convert from driving to flying mode, simply reverse the sequence.

How about a link to their website instead of a dumbass yahoo article without even a photo of the thing?

http://pal-v.com/

MPG?

38 mpg on the road, 21 mpg in the air (calculated). I pulled stats from the chart here: googleusercontent.com

But, according to the newer page here: pal-v.com, we have 28 mpg on the ground and about 12 mpg in the air (calculated).

http://pal-v.com/

I'm not flying or driving in that thing.

At http://www.pal-v.com/ they have a gyrocopter version. I think it looks way cooler (no product photos yet though).

Disclaimer: I know an employee of this company.

Unfortunately for him, a cheap, safe, mass-market flying car was announced an hour later.
This one?
http://www.pal-v.com/

These guys have got your "flying car" right here. It's a lightweight, streamlined tricycle design, with a Mazda rotary running on diesel/Jet-A and retractable stabilizer and gyrocoptor rotor blades. It looks like a pretty good attempt, and the HITS (highway in the sky) system (see here for similar example) would certainly help the punters to navigate.