The Flying Car Invented! Again!

The hit of the New York Auto Show is a vehicle which claims to be the world's first Flying Car. It's now received more airplay than any other model at the show. Although pitching them at the Auto Show is a new twist, there is otherwise very little new about either this vehicle or the concept of the Flying Car itself.

In fact, the Flying Car may be one of the most frequently "invented" concepts out there. I have reported on them here before. Every two years, like clockwork, someone invents another one. And each one makes the pitch that such and such is a breakthrough or that it has never been done before. To me, it seems to have been done to death.

Since it's such a seemingly booming (if non existent) field, perhaps the time has come to provide potential manufacturers with an acceptable definition of a Flying Car. That way they would know one when they build one. Unlike the current and previous vendors, I think the average person has a fairly good handle on the concept of what a Flying Car should be. As a service to those people willing to build and/or throw millions of dollars into the development of such, I have come up with a necessary and sufficient...

Definition of a Flying Car

In order to qualify as a 'Flying Car' a vehicle must encompass the following three concepts. 

1. Vehicle must be able to take off and land without a runway or dedicated external support facility of any kind. This almost subsumes the VTOL (vertical take off and landing) function, but could be stripped down to cover any vehicle which does not require an airport or specifically conditioned area from which to take off or land from. Optimally, a Flying Car should be able to take off from traffic and, if need be, land back in traffic without creating undo complications. It is also acceptable if the flying car never has to deal with traffic at all and has its own generally available transit system.

2. Vehicle must be capable of conventional garaging. It must park like a car: in your garage, in your driveway, on the street, at the store and at any other place where conventional consumer commuter vehicles can be found. This means no aviation gas. This means that it can't be the size of a plane,  or a tank or a truck. Ideally, it should be car-shaped or car-sized, at least on the ground. Also ideally,it cannot require  some pit stop  transition phase. If you have to halt it, get out and change the vehicle from a car to a plane or a plane back into a car, it's no more a flying car than a pop up camper is a house.

3. The operation of a Flying Car may be no more complex than that of other conventional consumer commuter vehicles. It can be different than driving a car, however it cannot require training far in excess of what it takes to operate any other common vehicle type. Baked into this idea is that a potential operator not need to possess any specific talent in order to qualify for training to operate the vehicle --and that the training period not exceed that required for other conventional consumer vehicles. No rocket science, no CDL. no professional time suck certification of any kind.   If it requires a pilot's licence to operate, it's a plane and not a car.

Have we actually invented a Flying Car?

No. Since 1937 or so, we have quite copiously failed to invent a Flying Car. Pictured above is the Aerocar, to date the only mass produced vehicle touted as a Flying Car. There was a vehicle very similar to it which appeared in 1937, but the venture quickly failed. Aerocar and its competitor Airphibian are the only two Flying Cars to have made it to the production phase. Introduced in 1948, the Aerocar remained available through 1962. (Production ended in the late 1950s.) The similar Fulton Airphibian was available, in various models, from 1950 to 1956. Neither were actually Flying Cars, but rather driveable aircraft. In short, you can drive them to an airport, take off from the airport, land at an airport and then drive them to your destination. The Aerocar owes its relative success to its economy of acquisition and savings gained through off airport storage. For a plane, it was fairly cheap. And you could use it as a car or store it at your house when it's not being an airplane. The Fulton Airphibian was slightly better as an airplane, but required storing parts of it at the airport. Neither were all that good as cars. The current Terrafugia is more of the same. No one is going to take their 3 wheeled Terrafugia on a supermarket run. Like previous Flying Cars, the Terrafugia is going to be driven to and from the airport-when it's through being shuttled around to car shows.

If it ever makes it into production at all, that is. The majority of the Flying Cars that have been touted thus far never make it much past the prototype and promote phases. Those that aren't driving airplanes are like the device above--a small, dangerous flying thing. The one before the Sky Car here looked like a flying saucer--and there have been a spate of such designs since the 1950s. Unless portable power output develops by leaps and bounds, designs such as this have limited utility. Advances in the un-winged aircraft belong more to the military sector than to the area of commuter vehicles.

Which is not to say that the quest for a Flying Car has few advancements. The Helicopter and, to a lesser extent, the auto-giro, both started as attempts to create a Flying Car. Both efforts fell short, but did advance the field of aviation to some degree.

Unless George Jetson was hiding some mad skills, the actual advent of the Flying Car is a long way off, if not impossible. Today a car that flies is a plane--and quite rightly so. Some pilots may be nitwits, but at least they have put in some effort. I certainly don't want just anyone out there flying around and potentially giving me a roof job. So the concept may be utterly stupid on its face.

We have little to fear currently. Not only have we not invented the Flying Car, we're not close. And I don't care what the next group of rich boys are selling. A Flying Car is a car that flies. Accept no substitution.