20 years ago, the Moller Sky Car was making headlines. Still not much to show. But the demo videos were pretty neat.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moller_M400_Skycar" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moller_M400_Skycar</a><p>Demo: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shlZySkGq6g" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shlZySkGq6g</a>
I've followed and thought about this space for long. It might turn out that humans are the last things to fly on autonomous vehicles.<p>Quadcopter drones are already used routinely for information gathering purposes. We might get autonomous small aircraft that do van sized cargo delivery quite soon. Those and other similar systems then get enough repetition and practicalities sorted out that eventually humans can be transported.
One thing that my child mind never accounted for was what happens if my flying car breaks down? In a normal vehicle, it cruises to a stop and gravity keeps it on the ground. That same principle becomes sheer terror when applied to a flying car model.
If we are unable to make full self drive work for cars, how are we going to safely have flying cars land anywhere except far out of the way airports?<p>The dream of flying cars is to reduce City traffic, and until we can take off and land safely in a city there is no point.
Well,
are here? No. They can start to spread in few years? Yes.<p>Where: NOT for urban mobility despite the claims. Instead they match PERFECTLY the substantial green new deal, or the large sprawl of single family homes and small buildings because no one want flying things in a dense are, take off and landing are nightmarish etc while in a moderately spread area they are the perfect match: you have nature, space to evolve, and anything is still nearby because 60km is just 10' flight.<p>How? Well, at first I think not eVTOL but some VTOL with various tech, simply because the battery is too heavy to be efficient in such form, we can make eSTOL that for not-so-short range flight are nearly efficient as cars, but they can be used in a mid-dense scenario, so they are possible and practically useless.<p>A small note: <a href="https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-report.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-...</a> EU/McKinsey focused NOT on the possibility of flying stuff but on public acceptance of them. Take a serious note on that. Some small planes are already as efficient as car for many kind of flights and they do not demand the road infra from any point A and B of a flight, of course there are various constraints, but roads have others constraints as well. The reality is that we have roads because we can naturally work, ride animals who walk etc, modern era means also modern means.
Not exactly flying cars, but Korea is rapidly making real progress on drone taxi, helps the government has seriously supported such things:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKGK_8gmNQ4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKGK_8gmNQ4</a>
America will go to any length to avoid undoing an export far more damaging than any of its nuclear bombs: its 1960s city planning<p>Even if it means crippling its own economy and the economies of its allies<p>Think of the trillions of dollars lost per year globally because some seppo modernist urban planners were arrogant enough to think they’d uncovered the ultimate solution to designing cities regardless of the nuances or context<p>Want to begin repairing Pax Americana? Get private interests out of your public infrastructure operations. Be a role model for other countries within the American Empire to emulate
New York actually had Air Taxis (passenger van helicopters) that shuttled people around the city until 1979 when a horrible crash ended the company forever.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Airways" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Airways</a>
A Dutch company sold 100 flying cars to Dubai:<p><a href="https://innovationorigins.com/en/dutch-flying-car-soars-with-80-million-dubai-mega-deal/" rel="nofollow">https://innovationorigins.com/en/dutch-flying-car-soars-with...</a>
In the sense that the current driving population will pilot around a "flying car", no, that will never happen. A. aviation is expensive so the general populace will never afford it and B. imagine the idiots in cars now except in the air.
Forget flying cars -- a 50's consumerist fantasy. I'm begging for basics like safe bike lanes, fast public transit and cheap high speed rail.<p>> It’s often remarked upon, in boosterish circles, that American society allows about forty thousand road fatalities a year but refuses to tolerate even one aviation death.<p>We shouldn't tolerate that either!