Boeing CEO: First Operational Self-Flying Cars Are Less Than 5 Years Out (geekwire.com)

Speaking at the GeekWire Summit, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the company is making rapid progress on the first operational self-driving airborne vehicles and that we could see them take to the skies in under five years. "Muilenburg laid out the company's vision for flying cars, as well as the importance of safety measures for the concept," reports GeekWire. "Muilenburg said the company is already building prototypes and expects them to fly within the year." From the report: "Imagine a future city that has three-dimensional highways, with flying taxis, flying cars," Muilenburg said. "That future is not that far away. In fact we are building the prototype vehicles today. We are also investing in the ecosystem that will allow that to operate safely and reliably as it must." The full vision of self-flying cars ferrying people through busy urban areas will take longer than five years to realize, Muilenburg said, but vehicles that start with more simple functions like cargo aren't far away.

The ecosystem to manage this new method of travel includes enhanced air traffic control. Earlier this year, Boeing teamed up with Austin-based SparkCognition to develop artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies for tracking and directing flying cars through traffic corridors. Muilenburg wouldn't say where these futuristic vessels would be tested, though he did say that the environment would be a "similar case" to Airbus' Vahana flying-taxi testing ground in Pendleton, Ore. Testing self-flying cars requires dedicated airspace and a slate of approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Comments

I don't want a self flying car

[stealth_finger]

I don't want a self flying car, I want to fly that fucker myself, and if it could be the shape of a spitfire that would just be tops.

Not going to be mainstream

[LostOne]

Flying cars are not ever going to be mainstream. The problem isn't who operates them (humans or machines), even, though human drivers can't even handle two dimensional operations reliably so I would be terrified of the average driver today having to deal with three dimensions. No, the problem is the energy cost of getting a car in the air in the first place. I don't see a reasonable solution to that problem coming any time soon unless we discover some heretofore unknown magical method of doing antigravity or something like that. In general, it's far more economical to keep general transportation using traditional ground transport simply because you necessarily remove the cost of lifting and then lowering again the cargo and vehicle.

That's not to say that rich people won't have flying cars. I mean, they may be a bit more practical and helicpoters assuming they ever work. That's assuming they aren't already helicopters....

Re:Not going to be mainstream

[religionofpeas]

Zeppelins are truly a majestic form of transportation, until you try to land one in a storm.

Imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

Your idiot neighbor having one of these.
The noise of these things flying over your house. day and night.
The 3 dimensional zoning debates. And lawsuits.
The amount of energy this needs, just while we try to reduce our energy footprint.
The pollution this generates right where it causes the most problems, in busy urban areas. The levels of energy required can only be achieved by burning something. crudely.

Don't get me wrong, flying cars would be great, in a Jetson style future. But in our overpopulated world I associate them with the more bleak and dystopian images of the future that some science-fiction paints.