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Where The Hell Are The Flying Cars? It's The 21st Century!

It's not just the cars themselves ... There will have to be infrastructure and business models.

This company is developing, and seeking FAA approval for, an inter-city flying taxi service based in central Florida.
Central Florida lands hub for Jetsons-like ‘flying cars’

The nation’s first regional hub for “flying cars” is being built in central Florida and once completed in five years, the vehicles will be able to take passengers from Orlando to Tampa in a half hour, officials said Wednesday.

The Tavistock Development Corp. said it was constructing a Jetsons-like aviation facility in Orlando’s Lake Nona area, the mixed-use planned community it built. Lake Nona already is home to several medical and research facilities.

The aircraft will be supplied by Lilium, a Germany-based aviation company that manufacturers the industry’s only five-passenger “electric vertical takeoff and landing” aircraft. At the moment, the Lilium Jets can travel up to 185 miles (nearly 300 kilometers) on a one-hour charge. ...

Passengers wanting a ride on the aircraft will be able to book reservations via their phones in a way similar to ride-share companies Uber and Lyft, officials said. ...

The vehicles flying and landing out of the Lake Nona Vertiport will accommodate four passengers and a pilot. The cost will be similar to a first-class fare, though the price will likely go down as the service becomes more popular, officials said.

Unlike airplanes and helicopters, the vehicles offer quick point-to-point personal travel, at least in principle. They could do away with the hassle of airports and traffic jams.

Battery sizes, air traffic control and other infrastructure issues are among the many potential challenges to commercializing them, according to experts. Experts compare the buzz over flying cars to the days when the aviation industry got started with the Wright brothers and the auto industry with the Ford Model T. ...
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SOURCE: https://apnews.com/article/flying-cars-hub-orlando-tampa-tavistock-55ec496c342e242d98aa2ca0c7b9b5b0
 
Vorsprung durch Technik... :)

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There's a small private airfield about five miles from me. Every weekend someone (generally referred to as 'plane wanker' by my kids) takes his little light aircraft out and practices 'trick flying' over the village. This would not be a problem, except for the fact that this plane has The Most Irritating Engine noise. Kind of a cross between a moped and a fridge. So he spends a couple of hours (although it feels like more when you are taking a lovely country walk) over the top of us, making 'neeeeeeoooooowwww' noises. Every weekend the weather is fine enough. We've been known to pray for fog.

I can only imagine that, were flying cars a reality, the skies would be full of joyriders doing similar, and they wouldn't stick to weekends.
 
catseye said:
There's a small private airfield about five miles from me. Every weekend someone (generally referred to as 'plane wanker' by my kids) takes his little light aircraft out and practices 'trick flying' over the village. This would not be a problem, except for the fact that this plane has The Most Irritating Engine noise. Kind of a cross between a moped and a fridge. So he spends a couple of hours (although it feels like more when you are taking a lovely country walk) over the top of us, making 'neeeeeeoooooowwww' noises. Every weekend the weather is fine enough. We've been known to pray for fog.

I can only imagine that, were flying cars a reality, the skies would be full of joyriders doing similar, and they wouldn't stick to weekends.
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Yup, it's always seemed obvious to me that tiny personal aircraft would be trouble.

Have you read Catch-22? Or heard of Randy Rhoads?
Your plane wanker might one day feel too lucky. :cool:
 
escargot said:
Yup, it's always seemed obvious to me that tiny personal aircraft would be trouble.

Have you read Catch-22? Or heard of Randy Rhoads?
Your plane wanker might one day feel too lucky. :cool:
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He is no Yossarian, that's for sure. Probably a local businessman who has a 'Hobby'.

His wife's gain is our (peace) loss.
 
catseye said:
little light aircraft (...) 'trick flying'
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This used to be an almost daily occurrence here, especially in the summer, but fortunately it wasn't bang over head, but a mile or two away, so we could watch it and not be too bothered by the noise.
That, though, was a business that operated out of a local airfield and for a fee would take you up in an acrobatic plane.
It looked like fun.
Was probably quite costly, and likely chunder-inducing.

Don't see it anymore cos they stopped any aircraft operating from that site about 5 years ago, with a plan to build a few hundred homes there, but a local protest group got involved and found out that it had some historical significance as being some kind of 'decoy' airfield in WW2 (or something), plus there are newts or frogs there, or some kind of special lichen....i dunno...but whatever, they aren't building there yet.
 
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Oh, I know where the Flying cars are;

On my T shirt.

I'm wearing my Moller T shirt today.
 
Trevp666 said:
That, though, was a business that operated out of a local airfield and for a fee would take you up in an acrobatic plane.
It looked like fun.
Was probably quite costly, and likely chunder-inducing.
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As in the fillum Space Cowboys? :chuckle:
 
40 years or so since I did aerobatics, I could stand about 20 min then had to start thinking
about not seeing my brecky again, best way is to fly the plane, the harsh engine type noise
you hear is probably the propeller tips becoming supersonic not that knowing helps if you
don't like it.
 
RaM said:
40 years or so since I did aerobatics, I could stand about 20 min then had to start thinking
about not seeing my brecky again, best way is to fly the plane, the harsh engine type noise
you hear is probably the propeller tips becoming supersonic not that knowing helps if you
don't like it.
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I don't mind the noise, but it's the fact that it's always when everything else is relatively quiet and that it goes on for sooooo looooong! I'd guess it's not worth getting the plane off the ground for ten minutes of tootling about, but it can be literally all afternoon.
 
catseye said:
I don't mind the noise, but it's the fact that it's always when everything else is relatively quiet and that it goes on for sooooo looooong! I'd guess it's not worth getting the plane off the ground for ten minutes of tootling about, but it can be literally all afternoon.
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I'd start hoping for a different sound. Like a phut phut phut phut...
phut...phut...


phut

BANG
 
I can see a future market in developing parachutes for flying cars.
 
Vardoger said:
I can see a future market in developing parachutes for flying cars.
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That's what this consumer poll from almost 4 years ago would suggest ...
Flying cars to take off? Americans want a parachute

Flying cars are beginning to look less like science fiction these days, with big companies and small startups developing working prototypes. Nothing’s commercially available yet, but experts say highway vehicles with wings are possible over the next five to 10 years. ...

What do consumers think? Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle at the University of Michigan’s Sustainable Worldwide Transportation Program conducted a nationwide survey and found: ...

About 63 percent said they’re “very concerned” about flying car safety, but the other 37 percent said they’re not. ...

Nearly 80 percent said a parachute would be “very” or “extremely” important. ...

SurveyMonkey polled Americans 18 and older from its respondent database and received 508 fully completed surveys. The margin of error at the 95 percent confidence level for the overall results is plus or minus 4.3 percentage points. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/b...cars-take-americans-want-parachute/100800432/
 
I've said it before and i'll say it again.

The 'flying cars' which I've seen are pretty much all more like 'roadable planes', in that, what we all really want are cars like from Bladerunner, that look like regular cars, but you get in them and they go up instead of along, and you press a button and it takes you to your destination. Much like the flying DeLorean in Back to the Future, but with an auto-pilot.
Regular people do not want something that they need a pilots licence for, which has foldy-out wings and a propeller.
 
EnolaGaia said:
... This company is developing, and seeking FAA approval for, an inter-city flying taxi service based in central Florida. ...
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Update ...
A Fleet of Air Taxis Is Coming to Central Florida by 2025

The city of Orlando has given the go-ahead to the German aviation company Lilium to build a “vertiport”—a 56,000-square-foot air taxi facility. Lilium has designed a five-seat, fully-electric, piloted aircraft that can take off and land vertically, and travel up to 186 miles within an hour of being charged. The company flew a demonstrator in 2019 and hopes to launch its fleet by 2025.

... The Lilium vertiport will service both Orlando and Tampa, which gives it access to some 20 million potential customers.

Lilium is staking its future on an aircraft design that it says will be simpler and cheaper to manufacture and maintain than other air vehicles, with 1,000-times fewer parts than a traditional jetliner. It uses 36 single-stage electric motors providing near-instantaneous thrust in almost any direction, negating the need for rudders, ailerons, and a tail.
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SOURCE: https://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/orlando-takes-high-road-180976721/
 
<<Nearly 80 percent said a parachute would be “very” or “extremely” important. ...>>

How many of those 80%:
1) Wonder about where the car would land if they bailed out. The most likely place for a crash is soon after take off or in the approach to landing, which is likely to be near to a centre of population.
2) Realise that using a parachute is a skill that needs training and practice, and a certain minimum level of fitness.
 
Would you trust YOUR neighbors to land one of these things next to YOUR home after they've been chewed out by the boss, or stopped by the local pub, or maybe both?

Would you trust YOUR neighbors to maintain their flying cars according to the operator's manual?

Would you trust YOUR neighbors not to run out of fuel/energy at an awkward moment over your home?

If so, then you are more fortunate than I.
 
Mikefule said:
<<Nearly 80 percent said a parachute would be “very” or “extremely” important. ...>>

How many of those 80%:
1) Wonder about where the car would land if they bailed out. The most likely place for a crash is soon after take off or in the approach to landing, which is likely to be near to a centre of population.
2) Realise that using a parachute is a skill that needs training and practice, and a certain minimum level of fitness.
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How about if the parachute were attached to the car, not the driver, and opened automatically? Big parachute needed, of course, but would potentially cover those 2 concerns.
 
Peripart said:
How about if the parachute were attached to the car, not the driver, and opened automatically? Big parachute needed, of course, but would potentially cover those 2 concerns.
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A conventional parachute with one person decelerates the falling person to a speed of around 17 mph. However, they have some control that allows them to turn into the wind, and adjust their attitude to reduce the landing speed.

Assuming a similar weight to canopy size ratio, and assuming that the parachute had time to slow the descent, but taking away some of that last moment control, you'd have, say, 1.5 tonnes of car and occupants landing at around 17 mph. That's got to spoil your day if it hits you.
 
Mikefule said:
<<Nearly 80 percent said a parachute would be “very” or “extremely” important. ...>>

How many of those 80%:
1) Wonder about where the car would land if they bailed out. The most likely place for a crash is soon after take off or in the approach to landing, which is likely to be near to a centre of population.
2) Realise that using a parachute is a skill that needs training and practice, and a certain minimum level of fitness.
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It will have to be part of the driver license training.
 
They will need two licences, one to drive a car and one to fly a plane

Plus an extension for the device that does both.

I predict they will be as common as helicopters licences.
 
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