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Toyota Demos A Flying Car. It Crashes. (ap.org)
thomst shares the AP's report on Toyota's latest venture. From the article:
A startup backed by the Japanese automaker has developed a test model that engineers hope will eventually develop into a tiny car with a driver who'll be able to light the Olympic torch in the 2020 Tokyo games. For now, however, the project is a concoction of aluminum framing and eight propellers that barely gets off the ground and crashes after several seconds... At a test flight Saturday in the city where the automaker is based, the gadgetry, about the size of a car and loaded with batteries and sensors, blew up a lot of sand and made a lot of noise. It managed to get up as high as eye level for several seconds before tilting and falling to the ground... After several attempts, the endeavor had to be canceled after one of the covers got detached from the frame and broke, damaging the propellers.
Project leader Tsubasa Nakamura envisions seamlessly transitioning from driving to flight like the DeLorean in Back To The Future, and his team still plans to perform their first manned flights by 2019.
Project leader Tsubasa Nakamura envisions seamlessly transitioning from driving to flight like the DeLorean in Back To The Future, and his team still plans to perform their first manned flights by 2019.
I love flying. The public loves the idea of flying cars. But flying cars are not a particularly good idea. They are energy intensive, far more than rolling cars. In addition to be wasteful of energy they're also noisy, dangerous and not particularly practical.
In the movies we all love, or hate, the flying cars are held up by wires or arms so they seem to be silently gliding along. Real flying cars have to do a lot of work to fight gravity and stay up. This ends up being noisy because they're wind effect machines. They're not silently surfing gravity or mysterious force fields. They're pushing air down hard enough to stay up. It is really not sexy and certainly not silent.
A lot of drivers are unable to navigate in 2D on the ground. Adding another dimension up in the air makes it that much harder for your typical Joe Blowshotair to drive. Expect a lot more accidents.
What gets more exciting is those accidents are going to be up above your head.
If you thought people flying camera drones over your house was bad, or ATVs & snowmobiles, then just wait until you have to deal with loud, dangerous, invasive flying cars zipping over your back yard and home.
Flying cars are a really bad idea.