The vehicle, certified for airworthiness and flight-tested over 170 hours with more than 500 takeoffs and landings, is now headed for mass production.
Jesus fuck please tell me that’s a typo and they left some zeros off. Your average commercial pilot has more than that before any airline is even willing to consider hiring them, that is absolutely not sufficient testing.
Still, early adopters may face bureaucratic turbulence. Potential buyers must be both licensed drivers and certified pilots.
No shit. And that is never going to change, becoming a certified pilot is a lot fuckin harder than getting a driver’s license, and for very good reasons. If some BMW-driving cunt can’t even be arsed to use his turn signal do you really want to ease the “bureaucratic turbulence” just so he can fuck up and crash into a packed airliner? These things still have to use runways, the people flying them still need to know how to behave themselves at airports, how to identify and avoid restricted airspace, how to communicate with ATC and how to behave if (let’s be honest, when) they get Intercepted.
And all of this so you can have a car that’s worse at being a car, and an airplane that’s worse at being an airplane, but hey at least you won’t have to book a rental car at your destination airport, which I remind you they still have to use.
That’s not very expensiv…
So it’s a small plane then?
I swear I saw this on TV like 20 years ago, it’s a stupid idea, if I wanted a plane I would buy a plane and then drive to the airport in my car, attempting to combine the two technologies just makes both of them worse.
Oh just like they did 5yrs ago every 5 years since the invention of powered flight
It’s called a plane.
I feel like “mass-produced” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Also, insurance is going to be insane.
Also “car” - can my local mechanic service it and give it a flying certificate? If not, it’s not a car.
More like a barely road-worthy airplane.
You don’t get insurance on these
You’re right; I forget insurance is for the poor.
Damn, we really got flying cars before
- GTA 6
- Elder Scrolls 6
- Half Life 3 (but barely? Hopefully?)
It’s a Lamborghini with wings stuck on the sides, it’s not a flying car.
There are street legal autogyros that are a lot cheaper and make more sense as a crossover vehicle
a plane. A flying car is called a plane.
I bet it handles like a boat on the roads though.
A plane that looks a bit like a car.
Give me a intercity train or intercity tram any day.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an intercity tram before. They tend to be strictly local affairs. Probably because local governments have to lay the lines, and there would be some kind of giant argument if it went across jurisdictions.
I’ve seen them in Germany, but between relatively small cities and towns.
Not Just Bikes made a video about Trams not long ago.
It’s not a flying car. It’s an airplane.
It’s by definition trying to merge two opposite specs into one vehicle using the worst aspects of the two.
Mass-Produced
I want to see these masses who can pay the million :)
A million doesn’t get you what it used to, and you’d be shocked at how many quiet millionaires there are out there.
There might be a lot more millionaires than before, but it’d still be a much smaller number who could drop $1M on a flying car.
It’s cheaper than a private jet and there are LOADS of them buzzing around polluting the skies.
Way more expensive than most private aircraft, though.
I’m still of an opinion that private aircraft is for sports and for farmers and for doctors\firefighters\rescuers in remote areas like rural Siberia. And, of course, for people wiping their ass with money.
It’s unfortunately not the same as having a spaceship in some sci-fi universe. The word “ship” hints why, the legal infrastructure, the expenses and most of all required qualifications make flying a plane more demanding.
I don’t see how making a weird car-like plane changes that.
This looks to me like yet another in a surprisingly long line of airplanes that are also designed to be driven on roads in someway, but they’re basically all noticeably worse at either task than vehicles designed specifically for one of those tasks. It also invariably ends up more expensive than two specialized vehicles, so there’s never really any reason to build these.
That may be true, but private jets are significantly more practical than this. If you’ve got private jet money, you can just afford to buy a jet and a decent car at your destination.
With the range of a cessna skyhawk ($400k-$500k aircraft), no way it’ll replace a private jet.
OK. Yes, then I want to get this shock :)
an assembly line that can make 2 per year still qualifies as mass production. At the level of people who can afford a million you can’t sell more than a couple per year anyway. There are a few car companies that have production numbers in that range.
A million and get a pilot licence.
I mean you can get a licence for 20-30k, the maintenance is deadly on a plane though, you could buy a very nice car each year on that money.
I don’t trust must drivers on roads, much less the air. No good will come of this.
I am driving through a slight detour on my commute, it’s still 3 lanes but with a slight bend, motherfuckers can’t even keep their car in their fucking lane, almost hit 3 people this morning, fuckers can’t drive
A truly universal experience
“The AirCar fulfills a lifelong dream to bring the freedom of flight into the hands of everyday people.”
The price? Between $800,000 and $1 million, depending on specs.
Don’t forget the cost and time investment in getting your pilots licence.
Also there is no way this is going to be legal to drive on public roads in most countries - just look at the massive tail boom that sticks out. This is just a fancy aircraft for people that want an overcomplicated Cessna.
What’s crazy is you can build a kit plane for less than what this costs, and flying a kit plane does NOT need a pilot license in the US.
Woah woah woah. Not even close to true. The only things you can fly without a license is a single seat ultralight, paramotor, and similar things that most people would barely think of as a plane. There are very specific and restrictive requirements, both on the aircraft and what you can do with it.
Anything bigger, homebuilt or not, will require a LSA license at least ans many (if not most) a full PPL.
The tail boom is massive compared to a sports car but I think the folded-up package looks not bigger than a giant American SUV.
Speaking as one who routinely has trouble parking a motor home and driving over curbs with it — this big awkward-looking vehicle doesn’t look like a great city-car but it does not compete with motor homes for the awkwardness prize.
I couldn’t find specs skimming through the article, but it doesn’t look like it would fit in any normal parking space. Driving around might be as unwieldy as a motorhome or box truck, without the height advantage when you inevitably drive over a curb while turning. Doing that might also make it un-airworthy.
Do you see what happens, Larry?
Yeah, I too once thought flying cars were the best idea since sliced bread. I’ve since grown up and realized that they’re just airplanes with extra steps, cause it’s not like you’re ever going to be able to land it on a highway or whatever. It will always be cheaper to just buy an airplane and a car and use one to get to the other.
I guess the problem is that if you take your car to the plane, then your plane somewhere else, suddenly you don’t have your car. And then if you drive somewhere else you don’t have your plane any more.
I think it’s pretty obvious that rental cars and commercial flights make a lot more sense for most scenarios. But I guess it’s possible to imagine scenarios where this vehicle makes sense, either for extensive round trips or for places where car rentals don’t exist but the roads are nevertheless pretty good.
This is more complicated than you think. The vast majority of airports in the US are tiny little things you would barely know are there unless you’re a pilot. Most don’t have rental car services. Many are in communities where even lyft/uber are not available.
The flying car thing is still pretty dumb. But it’s not as dumb as it might first sound. One of the #1 problems my family has when we fly our (very small, very old) plane on trips is how to get from the airport to anyplace reasonable.
Yeah, I imagine parts of the US is probably pretty ideal for this. Where I’m from you’ll find remote places where it would make sense, but you probably wouldn’t want to drive around in a rather low riding sports car on the roads in these places. I guess this thing probably won’t be street legal in Europe anyway.
Yeah I was gonna say, there’s a whole-ass rental car industry exactly for that kind of purpose. But this isn’t the sort of thing you buy because it ‘makes sense’, you buy it because it’s cool and you have fuck-you money so that’s enough of a reason.
It’s also that usual cars don’t fall down on someone’s head. And can just stay on one place for traffic jams.
Not possible until Star Wars style repulsors are created, and even then TBH not that cool.
