Ford and University of Michigan Study Whether Flying Cars Would be Better For Environment (detroitnews.com)

Ford and the University of Michigan undertook a study to see just how efficient vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles would be when compared to both internal combustion cars and electric cars. From a report: The study found that these flying electric vehicles, while not suitable for short commutes, could play a "niche role in sustainable mobility for longer trips." Flying cars could also be valuable mobility options for congested cities as part of a ride-share taxi service, according to the study published Tuesday in Nature Communications. "With these VTOLs, there is an opportunity to mutually align the sustainability and business cases," Akshat Kasliwal, one of the authors of the study and a grad student at the School for Environment and Sustainability, said in a statement. "Not only is high passenger occupancy better for emissions, it also favors the economics of flying cars. Further, consumers could be incentivized to share trips, given the significant time savings from flying versus driving." The sustainability study, the first ever conducted for flying cars, comes as the automotive industry at large is focused heavily on autonomous and electric vehicles. Much of this focus is driven by emission regulation and a need to alleviate growing congestion problems in dense urban areas.

Comments

me no understand

[fluffernutter]

I'm no physicist, but I just can't fathom how a vehicle that has to fight gravity for the entire duration of the trip could ever be more efficient than something that rolls along the ground.

Re:me no understand

[thegarbz]

So what you're saying is that I win if I carry 3 passengers, or flying personal cars lose if they don't carry 150?

I am going to make a prediction here... I think you can guess which way the study will go based on your own assertion.

Re:me no understand

[AmiMoJo]

Only for larger aircraft. A Cesna 172 only gets about 18 mpg (15 mp US gallons).

nonsense

[sdinfoserv]

from a pure "sustainability" perspective, it takes far more energy to lift off the ground vertically and fly then any rolling vehicle.
secondly " high passenger occupancy " aka "buses" use less energy per occupant - when full - then single owner vehicles. Obviously this is true no matter if the "bus" rolls or flies , the more occupants, the better.
It seems the study, likely commissioned to push "Detroit", as an agenda also pushed by Detroit.
Just imagine what would happen if a City owned flying "bus" malfunctioned and crashed killing 50+ people on the bus, and 100 more on the City Street it crashed into. Flights would end instantly and permanently. Flying "cars", "buses" or personal transporters are pure fantasy as daily urban commuters for the common folk.

Re:nonsense

[gweihir]

The thing is that if you compare a heavy car with a single occupant and very light plane with multiple people, you may actually end up at numbers where flying seems to be competitive. Of course, in any fair comparison this is utter nonsense, as there are very light cars as well that can get a _lot_ more mileage out of the fuel.

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[Tough Love]

Aside from the obvious solution of parachutes...

Obvious to who? You do know that a parachute big enough to land an entire vehicle and payload safely is large, and requires much more vertical altitude to open than your garden variety base jumping rig. And do you think a parachute is reliable like a doorbell? No, they flap and swirl and have vortexes, occasional line tangles... a parachute is not like a doorbell. You can't reliably predict how much vertical altitude it needs to open. Good luck trusting your life to a parachute at 300 feet and falling fast.

Also, where is your parachute going to land? Are you driving your flying care over buildings, wires, water, trees, busy roads? Is it windy? Dark? Parachute, yah right, that's the ticket to surviving your flying car power outage.

Splat calculator says you have 5 seconds to live.