Flyer Cars

Imagine strapping yourself into your car and instead of going forward you begin to lift upward, sort of like you imagined a flying saucer would take off when you were a kid, but you’re no alien and this is for real.

Flying Cars, Are You for Real?

When Doctor Paul Moller founded the Moller Institute in 1983, the idea of a flying car remained in the world of fantasy and Sci-fi enthusiasts. Today Dr. Moller’s dream of commuter transportation using the sky has moved from the imagination to the first stages of reality. Today the Moller Institute through Freedom Motors (formed by Moller) has produced the MX-400, a futuristic looking sky-car that can take off vertically and get speeds of 350 mph. Its engine is light weight, producing less emissions than conventional motors, but has a drawback…it only get 15 miles per gallon.

Flying Cars become Competitive

The Moller Sky Car is not the only flying car in production. Flying cars or Personal Air Vehicles (PAV) are personal vehicles that maneuver both on the road and in the sky. Besides the Moller Sky Car there are at least four other PAV’s under development. The Transition by Terrafugia Inc, the Haynes Aero Skyblazer by Haynes Aero, the FSC-1 by LaBiche Aerospace, the Magic Dragon , by StrongMobile, and the Moller M400 Skycar by Moller International are changing the face of the vehicular transportation industry.

This change moves the concept and potential that has long been held only by the military to “car manufacturers.” The implication of these projects are many and may very well complicate the transportation industry, city planning, and aviation for years to come.

Flying Vertically

Not all future flying cars use Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) technology, but it sure has made the ones that do stand out amongst the crowd. This innovation allows the PAV to lift off instead of take off, making it more like a heli-car than a flying car.

VTOL has been in use by the US Military for some time, most notably in the form of the harrier jet. What’s remarkable is that both the Moller Sky Car and the X-Hawk use this same technology in their “for driveway vehicles.” There are some drawbacks to VTOL, like the price, but the advantages of VTOL technology in flying cars are obvious-no runways needed. It reminds one of that now famous line Doc Brown says to Marty at the end of Back to the Future: “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

The Future is in the Sky

Ever since society moved into motorized travel, the sky has been the final frontier of personal travel. It is only natural that as technology advances, car designs will develop that incorporate and amalgamate the ideas and dreams held within us.

With the increasing movement towards creating the next generation of vehicles, the sky is the most likely target. From Moller to LaBiche Aerospace, intense energy has begun to be put into lifting the everyday person into the sky. Whether future flying cars will be used for commuting or recreation, the possibilities are endless. With profound implications for society and the environment, the flying car’s effects are just beginning to be felt.

There was for a time about half a century ago when science fiction writers and artists had envisioned the 21st century as a fantastical future. Certainly a far cry from our current woes in politics and the economy, people 50 years ago thought of the year 2000 the as this wondrous place where all this great technology existed and our world seemed to be a Utopian wonderland with moving sidewalks and … flying cars.

At the turn of this century our society should have been well ensconced with automobiles that fly like the one pictured on the left. Popular science fiction of the 50s and 60s described a typical car that someone would own or rent that had no visible means of flight but could simply lift off the ground. On the other end of the spectrum there was the notion of some fantastical looking vehicle was more like a spaceship on wheels.

Whatever version of the flying vehicle most are familiar with, it become clear that by the early 90s, the reality of what was once predicted was no closer than a device that could teleport you form one place to the next. Comments like, “Where are the flying cars, moon colonies, floating cities moving, sidewalks jetpacks?” became the mantra of comedians and anyone from the post WWII generation that grew up reading science fiction.

A Flying Car – Is it Practical?

Even if we had flying cars in 2008 would they be practical?

• Considering the instability of gas prices one would have to assume that fuel for a personal airborne vehicle would have to be at least double the price of regular unleaded gas.
• Regulation of the airways, speed limits and flying routes would seem to be a logistical nightmare. Imagine needing to have the level of sophistication that air traffic controllers use except for the millions of cars that currently exist.
• Car dealers, auto transport companies and rental car companies would have to develop new systems and structures for sales, shipping costs and rental rates. Think about the new routine for picking up a rental car at the airport.
• Would every legal aged driver have to get pilot licenses?

Is all Hope Lost for the Personal Air Vehicle?

Yes and no. Believe it or not there are companies out there trying to make this one time fantasy a reality. One such company, Terrafugia, has a working design called The Transition. This vehicle, with retractable wings is designed to carry two people on one tank of premium unleaded gas and will be geared for 100 – 500 mile jumps. As far as other details like how to drive it, how high off the ground it will actually “fly” and cargo room, the company has solutions for that as well. So technically with a 1/5 scale model and computer simulations, their flying car is – possible. Whether or not they’ll actually make their debut in our time? That question will be answered around the time you order your first jetpack online.

Car Rental Charlotte Rent Car Charlotte

For over half a century, the vision of flying automobiles has captured the science fiction imagination in books, movies, and commercials. At face worth, the idea of a automobile lifting off the ground and soaring by means of the air is a terrific dream, but you’ll find more than a few caveats to making them a widely distributed reality. As men and women sit in targeted traffic jams across the nation, far more than some people today have wished they could basically rise up off the ground and zoom past the tangled ground based transportation method.Our existing method of transportation consists of planes, so why not convert automobiles for low level flight too? On close examination, the notion of flying cars goes way beyond the engineering limitations. Today’s site visitors is centered on employing roads and highways as directive paths for managing transportation. For our machines which are capable of flight, you can find rules about altitude, flying over cities, and controlling visitors in current air space. Automobiles equipped for flight would adjust the complete dynamic from the existing market, causing our society to rethink support systems like tires, brakes, engines, roads, fuel, and safety. Using the horrendous accidents already taking location utilizing a two dimensional lane changing system, just picture the nightmare of figuring out how to regulate traffic in 3 dimensional space, adding the vertical aspects of watching out for crazy drivers who’re trying to fly and speak on their cell phones.

A practical auto flight plan would should be tightly controlled with new rules about vertical lane changes, intersections, traffic flow, and controlled correct of way. Taking a automobile accident off the ground would virtually surely improve the fatality rate of even minor accidents at an astronomically improved rate. Completely new systems for air targeted traffic manage would have to be invented and instituted.

The prospect of driving in a practical automobile based flight method just isn’t most likely to take place in this century or the next. Our technology is not advanced sufficient to put the prospect of aerial navigation into the hands with the typical driver, anyplace in this world. It will be a fairly secure bet to assume that you simply will not be acquiring off the ground in a vehicle inside the foreseeable future. If science fiction writers choose to project the future of our commute to perform, they had superior stick with ground based systems or teleportation devices because the indicates most probably to become located in our future. At the least with teleportation, the advent of this new technology would have a greater possible for changing the face of transportation methods almost more than night, using a single new technologies to achieve a genuine transformation of our society.