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No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes On the Flying Car (theverge.com)
Last year, Bloomberg reported that Google co-founder Larry Page had put money in two "flying car" companies. One of those companies, Kitty Hawk, has published the first video of its prototype aircraft. From a report on The Verge: The company describes the Kitty Hawk Flyer as an "all-electric aircraft" that is designed to operate over water and doesn't require a pilot's license to fly. Kitty Hawk promises people will be able to learn to fly the Flyer "in minutes." A consumer version will be available by the end of this year, the company says. The video is part commercial and part test footage, starting with a lakeside conversation between friends about using the Flyer to meet up before switching to what The New York Times says are shots of an aerospace engineer operating the craft in Northern California.
In what way is that a "car"?
eg. Where do the kids/shopping go? If it rains you'll get wet.
No sig today...
This is as close as we've gotten so far. Not that there's anything wrong with buoyant / water based aircraft or roadable airplanes - but they're not flying cars
The problem with flying cars is neither technical nor financial. They will remain a dream. People can't even be trusted to move vehicles around on the ground without killing themselves or others. Flying cars will forever remain a dream even after they demonstrate a prototype, and even after they start offering them for sale.
Honestly - do you REALLY want to be up in the air with dozens of people who "learned to fly in minutes"?
"Just as there is nothing so unreal as reality TV, there is nothing as unsocial as social media." - Alistair Dabbs
How does it play such loud music while it's flying?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm usually against clicking any of the links and reading the article, but do yourself a favor and click on the link for the video.
This is a joke so big that it'll carry me through Monday.
Energy is the problem, and it's pure physics so we won't be able to get around it. Burning energy to hover someone in the air against gravity, especially if they are mostly "hovering" and not flying 500 MPH forward, is going to be orders of magnitude more energy required than rolling them forward on wheels. The majority of the energy will be spent on the horizontal vector, not the forward vector. So unless we suddenly develop anti-gravity technology from aliens, or we want to increase the energy required for transportation by a few orders of magnitude, it's not going to happen.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
...They are called airplanes. And there is a reason who don't just let people willy-nilly drive them around like we do cars
1 99.999765% of car drivers can barely handle 2 dimensions, going flying in 3 dimensions? Not a chance in hell.
2 the FAA will require a pilots license
3 the FAA will require aircraft maintenance. This means 99.999768% of all typical car owners will never be able to own one as they will whine like hungry babies when told they need to spend $8900 to have the engine rebuilt that is working just fine. Yes the FAA requires scheduled engine rebuilding.
4 Parking and FAA flight restrictions means you cant just fly from home to work.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You need to null out idiots. They're everywhere as part of the noise, and cannot be eliminated.
You can't null the idiots, which is why we have to have so many regulations on roads and vehicles. Once you add safety features the flying lawn mower, they lose the ability to fly. I'm sure you understand the basics of physics and weight limitations for lift.
Wind gusts-- yep, need stabilizers. But we deal with black ice, snow, and have to dodge stuff with cars, like the dog that ran out into the road in front of me, this morning.
These flying lawn mowers are skimming 10-15 ft above surface, reaction time in wind requires a hell of a lot more than simple stabilizers. 0 for 2 on Science, lets see how bad you really are.
Your Edward Scissors-Hand thinking is a bit goofy. In urban environments, we're running out of space close to ground, because we can't convince people to take public transportation, although much of public transportation lacks convenience.
And you won't convince many people that an open deck flying platform with little to no weight bearing capability is better than the bus. These things will cost huge amounts of money to "drive", get insanely poor mileage, and be extremely expensive to insure. This is not the car we see in the Movies, this is a small flying drone with humans as the casualty. In terms of Science, you just struck out.
Will stuff fall out of the sky? Probably. Will we sue the living hell out of people that do this? Yep.
As mentioned above, they would have to have insurance. Insurance for these would be insanely high. This is a product that few people could afford to use, let alone would bother using.
The early adopters will be the super-rich. If you look at SillyCon Valley, they pay jaw-dropping amounts of money for simple housing, so a flying drone car that gets them over the 101 to their offices filled with barristas and pool tables is a no-brainer.
Yeah, and it'll stay that way until we have an actual flying car (which this is not). Reality. You should see if you can find some.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.