Personal SUV of the Sky

BoomZilla writes "While we're all waiting for the personal jet packs we were promised in the magazines of our youth, another 'personal flying car' has entered the fray. The Taero 4000 will exist in the car/plane category, but will require a pilot's license and will operate from airports (...no lifting off from the back yard). The Taero has an interesting folding wing concept: '[the] wing fold system will enable automatic transformation from air to land travel with the wings folding to a position parallel with the fuselage'. The target base price for the Taero 4000, in assembly kit form, is $400,000 U.S. dollars (does not include assembly[!] or optional extras). According to the site, 'Taero is scheduled for first delivery in 2007'. The FAQ makes interesting reading. Competition for Moller International's SkyCar?"

Comments

How is this better?

[ericspinder]

Looks like a delorian with a plank across the top and an airplane fin on the back. I clicked on the "more information" button and got a page with a "nice" flash animation. The caption says, "click on a name above to see and hear what the experts say.", I did, Dr Douglas Ikeler (the only expert) makes a couple of glowing statements, Of course he is the founder, so that is completely unexpected. The first line in the FAQ was "Is Aerospectives planning to become a publicly traded enterprise?" which tells you where their heart is.

Really how is this more efficient than leaving you car at the airport and renting one at the other end? For 400,000 dollars you get the worst of both worlds.

Re:How is this better?

[mrgodzilla]

My thoughts exactly.. you pretty much nailed
what my thoughts were as I read through the
site -- and to top it off, the performance
stats are really too good to be true for any
folding design.

I don't see how they can list a price if they
don't even know how long it will take to
assemble -- woudln't you need to know something
basic like that to be able to price it out?

-- godzilla

Re:How is this better?

[Shoggoth of Maul]

That's no Delorian. The Delorian had panache. That *thing* looks more like a mutant Ford Focus or Honda Insight, another freakish-looking vehicle.

I personally don't think a "flying car" would be worth the effort unless it was a VTOL like the Moller is. Why should one have to get stuck in traffic on the way to the airport when your flying car is supposed to keep you out of traffic?

Re:How is this better?

[meta-monkey]

You're absolutely right. The design parameters for a road vehicle and an airplane are compeltely different. You might as well try to build a combination submarine/helicopter. Good freakin' luck. On the other hand, you could buy, say, a Mercedes SUV for like $50k, and then a nice used Cessna 172 for, say, $80k, and have both a good SUV, and a good airplane! What a concept!

Flying Cars....

[c_oflynn]

People seem to have trouble driving while using a cell phone - do you think most people are ready for complete 3D navigation? I guess thats why this thing needs a pilots license...

I really don't see whats so great about this. Seems like a homebuilt aircraft, as you still need all the normal things (pilots license, airport, etc).

Re:Flying Cars....

[Jeff DeMaagd]

You are right though, people are such goons with automobiles. I can only imagine that they'd just kill themselves within 30 days for not doing proper pre-flight checks and not paying attention

These projects AREN'T going to happen, I doubt anyone would be able to actually be able to legally use one in any developed country. IMO, Moeller is at best a fraudster, I think he has been just blowing hot air about his aircraft projects for longer than most slashdotters have been alive.

The FAA is basically on to him, he can't demonstrate the stability of the Skycar so it cannot be operated without a tether. If you want an airplane, just get an airplane, if you want a car, get one, if you want both, just rent a car at the airport wherever you land.

Flying cars?

[aardvarkjoe]

Most people can't handle a car that stays on the ground. I shudder to think what would happen if personal airplanes became common for commuting.

Fortunately, this looks more like a half-assed grab for investment money than anything else. I rather doubt we'll ever be seeing one of those things barrelling through the sky. The future of transportation is improved mass transit, not flying cars.

Re:Flying cars?

[eugene ts wong]

At each step, you have individualized transportation

The problem with individualized transportation is that the vehicle that you ride in takes up a proportionately large amount of room. In this case, it would make the sky look very messy to see tons of vehicles flying over your home. There are some planes now, but I can tolerate that.

When mass transit is implemented without the politics [almost impossible, unfortunately], then you can have an extremely efficient system. We had a lot of politics go into ours, but it's not too bad.

Flightpaths?

[IANAL(BIAILS)]

I wonder what kind of FAA regulations there would be for such a vehicle. Even if you did have your own personal landing strip for the car/plane/thing, I can't think that you'd be able to fly it just anywhere anytime. There would be flightpaths from other (commercial) airports to worry about... would you have to file a flight plan anytime you wanted to take off?

I'll believe it when I see it fly

[l810c]

This is a pipe dream.

I've been following the Moller skycar for over 20 years.(I'm not kidding, he gets an articale in Popular Science every couple of years). We should have been expecting a flying prototype each year in the past 20 years, still nothing more than short hops and tethered jumps.

So these people are going to build a prototype next year sometime when they find facilties and have this thing working in a year or two? yea right, next...

hang gliders

[mks180]

I once got a change to meet Francis Rogallo, the inventor of the hang glider. He told me that he envisioned it originally as a wing for cars that you'd deploy, fly where you needed to go, then stow it after you land and park the car.

Re:Taero vs. Moller

[Saeger]

Flying cars for the masses will always be vaporware as long as:

1. They can't, without fail, fly themselves on autopilot from point A to B (NO WAY can millions of morons be allowed to fly "offroad" in 3 dimensions; enforced skylanes are a must).
2. NIMBY eye-pollution.
3. VTOL flight consumes more energy than rolling along roads.
4. They're mechanically more complicated and expensive (despite economies of scale).
5. Birds splats are more dangerous than mosquitos :)

My main beef against flying cars would be the eye-pollution, with fear-of-morons falling out of the sky coming in a close second.

--

Re:Taero vs. Moller

[NoData]

These are all valid concerns to some degree, but really, I wonder if flying cars will ever be possible in today's legal reality. I mean, "liability" and its catalyst, "litigiousness", rule the day.

Seriously, could a Henry Ford or a Wright Bros succeed today? Or even a Watt or Fulton? Transport is dangerous stuff. You look at the ridiculous risks the inventors at the "heyday" of mechanical innovation took...they put a lot of people's lives on the line. People were zipping about in their Model T's without restraints, with little regulation, at unheard of speeds. Sometimes I'm amazed that even today they (the govnt) actually allow meagerly trained common citizens to pilot massive 2 ton projectiles at lethal speeds...it's really thanks to the inertia of history. You introduce new personal transport (e.g. the Segway) and the regulators and lawyers and risk managers and all sorts of bureaucrats of officialdom are all over you. And god forbid your device requires a modicum of personal responsibility and involves personal risks. That's not acceptable in today's liability-first world.

No doubt we're a lot of safer with the oversight...I wouldn't fly without something like the FAA...but we're talking about personal transport as opposed to commerical transport, and I regret that real innovation can't happen (or be seriously adopted) in today's climate.

(BTW, as for the "eyesore" complaint: I think replacing milions of miles of multilane monstrosities with greenspace is a fair trade-off for skylanes dotted with personal flightcraft.)

4000 lbs of Hype ?

[zymano]

This thing doesn't look safe at all. Very heavy also. I don't trust Kits . The website is sparse like it was made by one person company. No one should faith in what that website is saying . Seems like alot of exagerations .

Re:Taero vs. Moller

[blankmange]

And this same argument keep idiots from behind the wheel of an automobile...right?