"Roadable Aircraft" Moving Towards Launch

We discussed Terrafugia's plans for what they don't like to call a "flying car" — rather a "roadable aircraft" — last spring. The Boston Globe has an update on Massachusetts-based Terrafugia and its fight to get airborne in these parlous times. "The last serious attempt to bring a car-airplane hybrid to market was the Aerocar, in 1949. According to Carl Dietrich, chief executive of Terrafugia, that company built six prototypes. It needed 500 orders in order to gear up for mass production, but it never got there... 'It can be hard to explain the value of this to non-pilots,' Dietrich says, 'but when you're a pilot, the problems of high costs, limited mobility on the ground, and weather sensitivity are in your face, all the time.' The company says more than 50 of the vehicles have been pre-ordered. The target price is $198,000."

Comments

Not much of a plane either

[Yvan256]

Quote from their website:"Drive to your local airport, fly up to 400nm, land, convert, and drive directly to your destination."

Call me back when this thing can fly above one billionth of a meter.

Re:Uses

[mobby_6kl]

> 4. You're standing on a teleport pad roughly where you want to be, get off, and someone else probably arrives soon after you.

4b. Alternatively, due to a slight miscalculation of departure times somebody is teleported to your location while you are still on the teleport pad, instantly accelerating the atoms formerly known as "your body" into all directions away from their former positions in a bloody explosion.

Re:Alternative

[Lost Engineer]

Insightful? You completely stole that idea from Batman.