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Fairly Realistic Flying Car Offered for 2009 Delivery
An anonymous reader writes to tell us about yet another promise of a flying car. The Register is reporting on the latest from Terrafugia Inc called the "Transition" which is a combination car and airplane that runs on unleaded gas. The idea is that it's a car that you can drive to the nearest airstrip and, with the touch of a button, convert to an airplane, fly to an airstrip close to your goal, then convert back to a car to reach your ultimate destination. Of course, how many times have we been promised flying cars only to suffer in perpetual disappointment.
...when cars fly.
Plus it's a converted Datsun, comes with a golden gun/cigarette lighter, and a midget bartender.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Where are the flying cars?
It's the year 2000.
Where are the flying cars?!
Can I get my own cool Spectrum mask?
when you need him? Bring us Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang! Now THERE's a flying car.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Phew, being "fairly realistic" is pretty high up my list of desirable features for any air transportation I use.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
More like the 30s!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
This idea was never practical for the simple reason that the average driver can't be trusted to fly an airplane. Now that we live in the age of "Homeland Security", it's doubly unlikely that any government will allow "unknown flying objects" buzzing around.
The world is my oyster. That's why it's always in a stew.
This is not a 'flying car'. Yes, it may go on the road, and may actually fly. But it does neither well. Very impractical for actual driving with those blind spots, and if you're flying, why are you hauling a heavy roadable drivetrain around?
550lb total payload. -120lb gas, -200lb pilot + 150lb passenger = 80lb left. What...you were eplanning on bringing a little luggage?
This won't ever become mainstream without a serious amount of automated control. We already have enough problems driving in two dimensions. I can't even begin to imagine driving in three.
This looks very similar to the AeroCar on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight. http://www.airventuremuseum.org/collection/aircraft/Taylor%20Aerocar.asp From what I recall the AeroCar actually came close to serial production back in the 40s-50s, however was ultimately dropped.
Submitters, please either bring us crapload of algae/hybrid/electrical/fuel cell/ethanol/biodiesel/thyme-powered car stories, OR X-wing/SUV/flying-car ones, but not both. It justs doesn't make sense to prone energy-efficiency on one hand and use barrels worth of oil for stupid stuff on the other. Thank you.
Will it come with OnStar?
Look out below!
Ecogeek is reporting that you can get a car that looks like an airplane and gets close to 300 mpg. It also starts selling next year. The car in question is pretty sexy - you can preorder one at this extremely annoying web page.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
If you increase the power enough (jets anyone) you can reduce the size of the airfoils as you raise the velocity, but you pay for this with increased takeoff and cruising speeds. There are obvious hazards here as well as very high fuel costs. Helicopters cost a lot more to fly and maintain that fixed wing planes for good reason.
Do you want the average driver trying to fly over your city or land in your neighborhood at very high velocities? I sure don't. Bad weather would make the situation worse.
Even with the current safety status of fixed wing planes, if you ever try to get a very large life insurance policy, they may well ask you if you fly planes. There is a reason they ask.
Just imagine, driving a car from the street onto an airstrip, with several gallons of liquids in the tank and a trunk big enough to house a thermonuclear device. Why do you need a button for transfoming it into an airplane? Airport security will dismantle it anyway before allowing it onto the runway and I am sure for a couple of dollars extra, they'll reassemble your car as an airplane. Saves a lot in production cost, if you do not need all the fancy pneumatics, hydraulics and transforming gizmos...
Who says it's VTOL?
This one has wings that fold out and takes off and lands conventionally - hence the bit about finding a runway...
If the average person is 60 times more likely to die in a car crash than plane crash, what are the odds of dying in a flying car crash?
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
I can't wait to watch that high speed chase.
The construction of a plane is nowhere nearly hardy enough for typical road use. If you end up hitting just a bit of potholes, speedbumps, etc, are you ready to that vehicle in the air? Hell, cars these days are build with crash bumpers that are supposed to take a 5mph bump without driveability-affecting damage - no planes have them. The undercarriage of a car includes some of the world's most advanced engineering tuned for stability, handling, suspension and road noise - which adds significant weight. A plane has a few wheels (one that turns) and struts, nothing so complicated - because its light and just durable enough for landing on the runway. TFA mentions drivetrain and wing storage as two other clashing designs, but there are several more (road worthiness, air worthiness, strength, durability, luxury, maintenance).
It comes down to tuning for the target environment. A car is not a boat. A plane is not a car. Shoes are not wheels. Targeting two has predictable results: Everyone is let down.
From the latin, "terra" meaning "ground" and "fugia" meaning "flight into."
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Standard avgas is 100 octane low-lead, to mitigate detonation in traditional engines (Lycoming, Continental, etc). Most of these older engines haven't changed much since the 30s.
A lot of the newer, smaller engines, like Rotaxes and Jabirus, can run on automotive unleaded gas (often 93 octane). The older engines often can too, though you have to be careful as ethanol can eat up seals in the fuel system and give you a very bad day. This is getting more popular as gas prices rise
We're also starting to see airplanes with computer-controlled diesel engines running on standard Jet-A.
Also, the vehicle in TFA isn't VTOL--it would need a runway like any other airplane.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Gorilla influenced plug in hybrid SUV?
Alright, so long as it doesn't climb to the top of the Empire State Building to tap power off of that big light bulb up there.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
It's a common mod to make a little cessna fly on regular gas. Ya, they fly better with avgas, but they can fly perfectly fine with car gas. I'm sitting right this second about 400 yards away from a 172 that gets flown all the time with such a mod.
Let's get this out of the way: flying car.
To be a capable and licenseable road vehicle, it needs to have things like Lights, Bumpers, Side-Impact protection. Not to mention meet pollution regulations. And um, pneumatic tires, wheels, a transmission, and capable brakes. Those all add a heck of a lot of weight. At least 500 pounds that an airplane does not need. So it's going to be a mighty lousy airplane. Carrying a useless 500 pounds at air-freight costs is not an economical way to fly.
Then there are the FAA regulations, which are very strict, and hardly in conformance with the road regulations. Many very basic regulations about configuration are very hard to reconcile with the needs of an auto. The alternative is to license it as an experimental aircraft, which gives you some freedoms, but closes a lot of windows too-- making the plane difficult to insure, finance, and restricts its uses.
The article spends most of the time talking about how hard it would be to create a flying car, and it includes a 3D rendering of someone's concept vehicle. Then, the last page has a quote from a non-existant company about how they will exist in 2009, even though the engineering required to build it isn't even known yet. The first page even links to an article about how NASA helped finance a flying car but there were no takers. I'll be driving a Moller Skycar powered by a perpetual motion device before this thing even makes it past a design review.
Based on what, exactly? Something particular in TFA that you can point to that is problematic with the FAA? TFA indicates that the manufacturers have been working with both the FAA and the NHTSA (the latter of which may be a bigger barrier.)
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Because it would be too heavy. The aircraft from TFA is just a conventional airplane with a fancy transmission and foldable wings and can't get airborne with a full tank of gas and two fat people. Add batteries an electric motor, a heavier diesel engine, ditch the wings and propellor for a less efficient rotor in a roadway-sized package and you'll end up with a flying brick. Minus the flying part.
Overall, the qualities that make for a good car also make for a lousy aircraft (and vice versa).
Here is a link to a pic and some of the text about the cars:
Japanese automakers getting cute at show
Their answer: Transform the car into a friendly companion -- not just a machine for getting around.
Honda Motor Co. even says its white bubble-shaped rubbery-surfaced Puyo, equipped with a panoramic window, is supposed to be a pet. The cabin part of Puyo, a fuel-cell vehicle, rotates so it never has to go into reverse.
pic of Puyo
The body glows in various colors of lighting under the car's silicone body surface to communicate with people, such as turning green when it's happy about its condition, according to Honda. The speedometer glows in a subdued blue tone from its dashboard that resembles gray cloth so the interior feels more like a room.
In a preview presentation to reporters, Honda compared the aesthetics of Puyo, whose name is based on the Japanese word that describes floating or soft objects, to cute things like a bunny and balloon.
Toyota Motor Corp.'s Rin looks similar to Puyo, but it has some dashes of green on white to highlight what the automaker says is its serenity so the driver feels at one with nature.
Pic of Rin (the gorilla one)
Rin, which means "upright" and "graceful," has a transparent floor and big windows. Its beige seating enhances passengers' skin tones, and the seats are designed to improve posture, according to Toyota.
"This car is about a beautiful and healthy mind," says Satoru Taniguchi, who oversees Rin, a plug-in gas-electric hybrid. Plug-ins run longer on electricity than a regular hybrid because it recharges in a household socket.
The cabin of Nissan Motor Co.'s Pivo 2, an electric vehicle, can rotate on its wheel base so that it can face the opposite direction. The vehicle's tires can also turn 90 degrees, allowing it to move sideways into tight spaces.
Pic of Pivo 2
To make sure its message of cuteness isn't lost on visitors at the Tokyo Motor Show, opening to the public Oct. 27, Pivo, derived from "pivot," has a bobbing robotic head near the steering wheel that talks in a high-pitched voice.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I read the material and see this for what it is: an attempt to make an airplane drivable. It is clearly intended for use primarily as a plane (under visual flight rules only!) but can be driven on the roads to and from your house. The "carness" is supposed to be good enough to drive in bad weather that you wouldn't fly in. But, there is a note on the page that it really isn't suited for city driving.
So, for the target audience, say a salesman with a large territory of fairly rural clients somewhat close to airports, this could be reasonable.
Will it succeed? Who knows? how many new airplanes succeed? how many new cars succeed? They're having to beat both odds
There's no fundamental reason this thing can be built. It's a light sport aircraft with folding wings and good taxi capability. The wings just fold, which looks stupid in car mode but can be done without much trouble. They don't retract into the fuselage like one of the cooler-looking but unbuildable designs for flying cars. It's going to be a lousy car, though. Too fragile, and with all that sail area, hard to handle in a crosswind.
There's probably a market for some kind of ducted-fan thrust vehicle usable in tight spots. Moller is unlikely to make his "Skycar" work, after forty years of failure. But someone else might. Such a vehicle needs turbine power, will cost as much as a jet helicopter, and will be a fuel hog. The military could use something they could drop down into an urban street. With helicopters, the rotor circle is too big for that.
Interestingly, we're seeing small UAVs with those properties. Flying robots will be deployed before flying cars. The stability problem for small pure-thrust VTOL aircraft seems to have been solved.
According to this site "kishimu" is one Japanese word that translates as "jar" in English.
We had a ranch in Northern Arizona and like a lot of ranches in that area, we had a private airstrip. A neighbor misinterpreted his newly minted instrument rating as permission to fly no matter what. He loaded up his family and took off near a thunderhead. The flight lasted just long enough to kill the entire family.
Weather in Arizona can get particularly nasty, even when you're paying full attention. Once, my father inadvertently flew under a thunderhead and survived by pointing the nose at the ground and pouring on full throttle. Even still, he only managed to not gain any altitude while he traversed under the cloud.
I think if these vehicles ever see the light of day, we'll see Darwin step up to the plate in a major way due to people 'laughing at the weather.'
now instead of worrying about just the idiots around me who can't drive, now I gotta worry about the ones above me too?
they'll be on their cell phones and eating a burger while flying their cars.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
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.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
While I would love to see a diesel-electric hybrid car, you aren't going to see one flying. Batteries are too heavy, and there's only one diesel aircraft engine currently flying and they had to do a lot of engineering to get it light enough.
But a gyroplane would be the perfect flying car -- the rotor is unpowered, so you don't need a tail rotor sticking out the back. You can use a prerotator to shorten takeoff distance (a few gyros can even take off vertically), and the landing roll is also very short. When in car mode, the rotor is far easier to fold as it is so much smaller and it won't interfere with the driver's vision as the folded wings do.
A gyroplane also flies a lot more like a fixed-wing aircraft than like a helicopter, so the pilot training demands are MUCH lower than a heli (still more than a fixed-wing, though).
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
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