We have had helicoptors for all these decades
I hope its a popular buy among all our billionaires.
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.
As long as they’re only using smaller airports. Let the millionaires and billionaires have this. It’s like another ocean gate scenario.
I agree with everything you’re saying though haha.
I still don’t get how these companies keep getting funded. There’s literally no way these things will ever become a thing. It’s simply ridiculous.
I’d be willing to bet if you put a calendar reminder in one year to check back on this you’d find that this car did not actually reach the mass-produced stage of industry.
Investors and venture capitalists fronting money and riding the Hype-Go-Round, but when the music stops and the lights go out someone’s going to be out a shitload of money.
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.
Seen this like 10 years ago lol
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.
How much can a replacement plane car plane even cost?? 1 million dollars? Better just buy 2 and keep one spare.
It’s called a plane.
No thank you, I’ll take a drone cab over this any day.
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.
With the range of a cessna skyhawk ($400k-$500k aircraft), no way it’ll replace a private jet.
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.
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.
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.
Oh just like they did 5yrs ago every 5 years since the invention of powered flight
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.
a plane. A flying car is called a plane.
A plane that looks a bit like a car.
I bet it handles like a boat on the roads though.
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.
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
