# The latest tech report on "flying cars"



## Retired Senior (Sep 12, 2016)

In the 1960s, at the New York City World;s Fair, I watched a man with a back-pack rocket fly up into the sky, hover, move around a bit, and land. It was said that a consumer model would be available within the next 10 years. I'm still waiting!

The popular cartoon, The Jetsons, featured privately owned flying cars. Another nice dream...

In the 1970s I had a neighbor who put together a mechanical kit that resulted in a one person helicopter. He kept it locked up in his garage and would take it out and fly during summer weekends. I thought that was the coolest thing ever!

Now, nearly 60 years later, we may be at the dawn of personal flying vehicles. But they don't seem as consumer friendly as the Jetson's flying car .








https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612891/when-will-we-have-flying-cars-maybe-sooner-than-you-think/*Smart Cities**
When will we have flying cars? Maybe sooner than you think.*
*After decades of promises, personal air vehicles are finally getting close to commercial reality-but you still probably won't own one*
by Gideon Lichfield
Feb 13, 2019

Two weeks ago I would have said flying cars were still firmly in the realm of techno-utopian fantasy, as they have been for decades. Now I'm not quite so sure. 
In the coming few years nearly 20 small airborne vehicles are supposedly hitting the market (see table below). Some are drone-like, with anywhere from four to 18 rotors keeping them aloft. Most are fixed-wing craft with propellers that point upwards for vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), and tilt forward for flight.
Some are also more realistic than others. While both Airbus and Boeing have projects under way, a raft of smaller companies are pushing aggressive time lines as well. Germany's Volocopter plans to start trials this year of a flying taxi in Singapore. Uber has claimed it will start test runs next year for a service between Frisco, Texas, and the Dallas-Fort Worth airport,and that it plans to start commercial flights in 2023; it has five flying-car makers as partners.

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But will they ever be safe, let alone affordable for anyone who isn't mega-rich? At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, I moderated a panel of experts who made a persuasive case that they could be-though, to be fair, most of the speakers had an interest in doing so.

The panelists were Dirk Carsten Hoke, CEO of Airbus; Ross Perot Jr., a Texas real estate mogul who is helping Uber start up the flying taxi service in Dallas; Liu Fang, director-general of the International Civil Aviation Organization; and Ion Yadigaroglu, a managing partner at Capricorn Investments , which has a stake in Joby Aviation. The panel was under the Chatham House rule, which means I can't report specific statements, but this was the gist.

*Flying cars currently in development*



Name & manufacturerTypeFirst manned flight*Expected deliveryAeromobil 4.0Folding-wing STOL 2014 (3.0 model)  2020 Aeromobil 5.0Folding-wing VTOLN/A 2025 or later Pop.Up Next (Airbus/Audi)Quadcopter 2018 (scale model only) ?Vahana (Airbus)Fixed-wing VTOL 2018  2020 Aurora (Boeing)Fixed-wing VTOL 2019 2023 (for Uber)Ehang 184Quadcopter 2018  2019? Volocopter18-rotor copter2016Trials in 2019Joby AviationFixed-wing VTOLN/A?LiliumFixed-wing VTOL 2017  Before 2025 Moller SkycarFixed-wing VTOL 2003 ?Pal-VSingle-rotor gyrocopter 2012  2020 Terrafugia TransitionFolding-wing STOL 2009  2019 VRCO NeoXcraftQuadcopter with tilting rotorsN/A 2020? Kitty Hawk Cora (formerly Zee.Aero Zee)Fixed-wing VTOL 2016 ?Opener BlackFlyFixed-wing VTOL 2018 ?Karem ButterflyFixed-wing VTOLN/A2023 (for Uber)Bell NexusHexacopter with tilting rotorsN/A 2023 (for Uber) or 2025 Embraer XOctocopter with rear propellerN/A2023 (for Uber)PipistrelFixed-wing VTOLN/A2023 (for Uber)* Where known, first flight of a pre-production model 
*Why are so many flying cars launching in the next few years?*

Lighter composite materials, better communications and guidance systems, and software that could enable the vehicles to fly themselves (probably essential if there'll be a lot of them in the air) have all played a part. Above all, battery technology is on the verge of making electrically powered flight feasible. We're still some way from the energy density needed for flights of any length, but short hops aren't completely out of the question.

*But wait-are these literally flying cars?*

Not really. A few, like the Aeromobil and the Terrafugia Transition, are cars you could drive on the highway, but most are more like personal flying vehicles .

*So, um, helicopters?*

Nope. Most have wings that generate lift, like ordinary planes. A few have multiple rotors, like drones. Either way they are, theoretically at least, safer than choppers (see below).

*When can I buy a flying car?*

Sorry, you probably won't be able to. At least for now, you'd need to be a certified pilot (or employ one) to fly it, and besides, where would you park it? They'll mostly be owned by firms such as ride-sharing companies and run on fixed routes.

*Will flying cars be autonomous? *

Ultimately, they probably will be; human pilots are expensive and might not be reliably safe in a really crowded sky. Autonomous flying is an easier technical problem than autonomous driving: obstacles in the sky are few and can be detected with simple radar, whereas a self-driving car needs multiple sensors and heavily trained algorithms to recognize people, other vehicles, traffic signals, lanes, and so on. An automated air traffic management system in constant communication with every flying car could route them to prevent collisions, with human operators on the ground ready to take over by remote control in an emergency. Still, existing laws and public fears mean there'll probably have to be pilots at least for a while, even if only as a backup to an autonomous system.

*Where will flying cars fly? *

Places where demand is high and road traffic is bad-within large cities or from city centers to airports. Rural or intercity travel probably won't make economic sense.

*Where will you catch one? *

At "vertistops" and larger "vertiports" on the tops of buildings, which will bring the building owners some extra revenue. (There'd also be chargers or battery-swapping stations there.) That's how we'll deal with the problem of finding space in crowded cities .

*Won't rides be insanely expensive?*

Again, most of these aren't helicopters but winged aircraft, so all the propellers' energy goes into pushing them forward after takeoff, not keeping them aloft. An electric VTOL vehicle's energy use per mile is theoretically comparable to that of an electric car. Mass production should eventually bring down the prices of the vehicles themselves. The real cost problem might be the pilots (while we still have them, at least).

Still, our panel speculated that a trip of a few miles might cost passengers as little as $40 or $50-a bit more than a ground taxi, but in a congested city you'd get to your destination much more quickly. In a 2016 white paper, Uber had some sunny projections (pdf, p. 1 and p. 95) showing that for certain routes at least, it will actually be much cheaper, as well as several times faster, to take a flying car than a wheeled one.

*Is it safe to have hundreds of flying cars buzzing above packed urban centers? *

To make vertical takeoff possible, these vehicles need multiple engines that can produce far more power that what's required for steady flight. That means that if one or two of them fail, the vehicle can still fly or glide to safety. New air traffic management systems will probably rely more on algorithms than humans to manage the routing-another reason why it's better if the aircraft flyautonomously .

*Okay, but what about a terrorist taking over a flying taxi and crashing it into a building? *

As on planes, you could separate the pilot's cabin from the passenger cabin to make a hijack harder. Failing that, maybe there'd be a system for letting ground controllers take over remotely, locking out the pilot, if the craft deviates from its planned route. In any case, one of these small craft probably can't do enough damage to make it an attractive target for terrorists.

*And how about hackers taking control? *

That's a more credible threat. Good cybersecurity is going to be essential.

*Won't flying cars be noisy?*

Again-they're not helicopters , so they don't have huge blades to disturb the air. Also, the engines will be electric.

*Countries are already going crazy trying to regulate drones; how will they regulate flying cars? *

These are pretty different problems. Since drones are cheap and anybody can buy one, regulators must stop people from doing malicious or stupid things with them. VTOLs and their pilots, on the other hand, could be certified for safety much like regular aircraft, so existing regulations might not need to be modified much. A bigger question will be whether individual cities decide to allow them in their airspace.

*So how long before flying taxis are a common sight in major cities?*

Estimates on the panel ranged from "two to five years (but more likely five)" to "10 years."

Is that plausible? Assuming a big leap in battery capacity, the biggest hurdle is likely to be regulatory. If flying cars are licensed and flown under the same rules as other aircraft, they could start to appear in a few places pretty soon, but managing large numbers of them will require a whole new approach to air traffic management. That, as a somewhat less boosterish panel of experts warned last year, is going to be a struggle.

_Correction: an earlier version of this story incorrectly gave the year of the first manned flight of the Opener BlackFly as 2017._
Cities, Battery Technology
Author

Gideon Lichfield


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## tohunt4me (Nov 23, 2015)

DO YOU REALLY WANT FLYING CARS WIDELY AVAILABLE ?

Imagine an angry x stalking you from the sky . . .


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## Retired Senior (Sep 12, 2016)

tohunt4me said:


> DO YOU REALLY WANT FLYING CARS WIDELY AVAILABLE ?
> 
> Imagine an angry x stalking you from the sky . . .


 At the risk of providing more ammo to members of this forum who seem determined to find fault with most of my posts, let me answer the question honestly. Just as some motorcycle riders refuse to wear helmets because they love the rush of air against their heads, I have always wanted to soar thru the sky. I have even contemplated buying weather balloons and filling them up with helium and attaching them to a lightweight chair. Cast off the anchor and up we go.

I saw a news story about a guy who did this back in the 1960s. When he wanted to descend he used a pellet gun to shoot a few balloons... Is this really any crazier than George H W Bush parachuting out of a plane (while holding on to a trained military man)?

And- it doesn't matter to me if anyone else could get a personal flying vehicle (car or otherwise) I simply want one for myself!

*https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...sky-dive-nbc-today-jenna-bush-hager/10362901/
*
*George H.W. Bush takes one last skydive for 90th birthday*
Former president George H.W. Bush turned 90 years young Thursday, and celebrated the only way he knows how: by skydiving.

Just as he did for birthdays 80 and 85, Bush marked the end of his ninth decade with one last parachute jump.

Aided by an ex-military jumper, Bush touched down near his home in Kennebunkport, Maine, at around 11:15 a.m.

The elder Bush had tweeted earlier Thursday: "It's a wonderful day in Maine - in fact, nice enough for a parachute jump."

*
*


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## uberdriverfornow (Jan 10, 2016)

lol "science fiction report" is the real name of that report


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## Retired Senior (Sep 12, 2016)

uberdriverfornow said:


> lol "science fiction report" is the real name of that report


"You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'"
*- George Bernard Shaw*


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

Sorry to burst a hole in your fantasy @Retired Senior, but a few things to consider:

Let's say there were flying cars in my hometown of Los Angeles. There's a docking station on the east side, and one on the west side. A lawyer who works in Downtown but lives by the beach decides to take a flying car from the westside station to the eastside station to save time on what would otherwise be a 1 hr commute in rush hour traffic to drive about 10 miles.

Let's say this guy was rich and he didn't care about the high price, he just wants to save time.

He would have to take an uber from his house to the westside docking station, then wait until the "liftoff" time, then travel in the air, then land, then take another uber from the station to his office.

Add up all those steps and he didn't save any time at all, but he did spend about 3x-4x the cost of an uber from his house to the office.

I know, I know... it would sure be fun to ride in one of these. But cost effective? time saving? No on both.

And... if it's not time saving or money saving then I don't see it becoming widespread.


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## goneubering (Aug 17, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> Sorry to burst a hole in your fantasy @Retired Senior, but a few things to consider:
> 
> Let's say there were flying cars in my hometown of Los Angeles. There's a docking station on the east side, and one on the west side. A lawyer who works in Downtown but lives by the beach decides to take a flying car from the westside station to the eastside station to save time on what would otherwise be a 1 hr commute in rush hour traffic to drive about 10 miles.
> 
> ...


Another toy for the bored rich but we already have helicopters so I don't see the point of flying cars.

Flying cars actually remind me of the failed Amphicar. They're both fun ideas but not very practical in the real world.


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## getawaycar (Jul 10, 2017)

Small private aircraft have a horrendous safety record. Not a day goes by you don't hear about some celebrity or executive crashing and dying in their private jet, small propeller aircraft, helicopter, etc. These flying cars will be just as bad if not worse in terms of safety and just as before, only the rich will be able to afford them.


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## everythingsuber (Sep 29, 2015)

Retired Senior said:


> "You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'"
> *- George Bernard Shaw*


I've been looking at Scarlett Johansson thinking "Why not?" for a while now.

Guess I just need to be a little more patient?


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## Oscar Levant (Aug 15, 2014)

Retired Senior said:


> In the 1960s, at the New York City World;s Fair, I watched a man with a back-pack rocket fly up into the sky, hover, move around a bit, and land. It was said that a consumer model would be available within the next 10 years. I'm still waiting!
> 
> The popular cartoon, The Jetsons, featured privately owned flying cars. Another nice dream...
> 
> ...


the Moller Skycar was the first it was extremely noisy it's on YouTube and it has something like eight nacells and each one is a rotary engine. it's an autonomous vehicle so a pilot's license is not required the problem is FAA and computerizing the skies. Moller, the inventor, says in order for it to get off the ground excuse the pun a bigger company would have to take it over he's taken it as far as he could personally with his own funds


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## Drivincrazy (Feb 14, 2016)

Uber has been propelled by riders who want/need to save money and convenience. I estimate 80% of riders can barely afford Uber now cuz of taxi like rates. The same hoard of riders will not even consider paying a plus amount to be airlifted to a nearby destination.

The time it will take to achieve cost effectiveness might bury Uber and other developers in huge, unrecoverable debt. Also, smart businessmen don't squander money...they can make use of their time while in a traditional Uber talking/texting on phones and tablets...it happens very often, currently. 

While reliable technology may arrive in 3-10 years...affordability must be proven in the form of dividends from profits derived from paying customers. I can see Uber spending research dollars until the day they go belly-up.


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