VIDEO: Flying Cars Are the Future!

Can you imagine what it would be like to fly to work in your personal vehicle?

Well, with baby steps, we are approaching that time in history! Just picture it – no more traffic jams!

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According to Wikipedia, a flying car is a type of personal air vehicle that provides door-to-door transportation by both road and air. The term “flying car” is often used to include roadable aircraft and hovercars. Many prototypes have been built since the first years of the twentieth century, but no flying car has yet reached production status. Their appearance is often predicted by futurologists, with their failure ever to reach production leading to the catchphrase, “Where’s my flying car?” Flying cars are also a popular theme in fantasy and science fiction stories.

A practical flying car would have to be capable of safely taking off, flying and landing throughout heavily populated urban environments. However, to date, no vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle has ever demonstrated such capabilities.

To produce such an aircraft would require a propulsion system that is quiet, to avoid noise complaints, and has non-exposed rotors so it could be flown safely in urban environments.

Additionally, for such aircraft to become airborne, they would require very powerful engines which would create huge and concentrated downdrafts, a bad idea in an urban environment. Many types of aircraft technologies and form factors have been suggested, such as ducted-fan and tiltrotor vehicles, but most previous designs have suffered from problems; ducted-fan aircraft tend to easily lose stability and have difficulty traveling greater than 30–40 knots, while tiltrotors, such as the V-22 Osprey, are generally noisy.

Due to the requirement of propulsion that is both small and powerful, the cost of producing a flying car would be very high and estimated by some as much as 10 million dollars.

In addition, the flying car’s energy efficiency would be much lower compared to conventional cars and other aircraft; optimal fuel efficiency for airplanes is at high speeds and high altitudes, while flying cars would be used for shorter distances, at higher frequency, lower speeds and lower altitude.

For both environmental and economic reasons, flying cars would be an enormous use of resources.

Although statistically, commercial flying is much safer than driving, unlike commercial planes personal flying cars might not have as many safety checks and their pilots would not be as well trained.

Humans already have problems with the aspect of driving in two dimensions (forward and backwards, side to side), adding in the up and down aspect would make “driving” or flying as it would be, much more difficult; however, this problem might be solved via the sole use of self-flying and self-driving cars.

In mid-air collisions and mechanical failures, the aircraft could fall from the sky or go through an emergency landing, resulting in deaths and property damage. In addition, poor weather conditions, such as low air density, lightning storms and heavy rain, snow or fog could be challenging and affect the aircraft’s aerodynamics.