Flying Car Passes First Flight Test

waderoush writes "Terrafugia — the Massachusetts company building a 'roadable aircraft' (that's flying car to you and me) — revealed at a press conference Wednesday that the Transition vehicle has been taken aloft for its maiden flight. The craft, which can fly up to 460 miles at 115 mph and then fold up its wings for 65-mph highway driving, was the subject of two hotly debated Slashdot posts on May 8 and May 13 of last year. The company said the first flight took place in Plattsburgh, NY; retired Air Force Colonel Phil Meteer was at the controls."

The future of the past

Flying cars, robot vacuum cleaners... the future of the mid 60's is getting closer every day!

Re:The future of the past

I want my television-phone!! Oh wait...

It's a TRAP!

Transition® Roadable Aircraft Proof of Concept.

TRAP Concept? Oh, sign me up!

Not really a "Flying Car"

This has been beaten to death over and over again, and I thought that, by now, people would understand that this product isn't a Jetson's "Flying Car," but already, with just two comments, we've got someone confused on the subject.

This is not a Jetson's style "Flying Car" for everyone to keep in their driveways. It is a plane that can fold its wings and has enough lights such that it is street legal. It is meant as something for private pilots (with pilot licenses) such that they can store their planes at home and "drive" them to the local airport before taking off on a pleasure flight.

It is NOT meant for people to fly to work after taking off from their garages, merging onto the skyway, and passing some old geezers flying outdated DeLoreans.

It's just a plane that you can also legally 'drive' on the road. That's it.

Re:Not really a "Flying Car"

We needed a starting-point. This is it.

Re:

Nobody is interested in an airplane the super-rich can drive to their villas after their day trip to the Bahamas. Everyone is interested in flying cars. If you put up an article about something that looks like it could someday lead to flying cars, people are going to comment on flying cars and what they would mean and how plausible they are.

Without the flying car connection, this article is more suited for some magazine that sells over-priced crap that no one needs like SkyMall, not Slashdot.

Nifty idea, but marginally too heavy

The video voice-over says that the Terrafugia's empty weight is 890 pounds. With a maximum gross weight of 1320 pounds set by the Light Sport AIrcraft rules, this leaves a useful load of just 430 pounds. Gasoline weighs 6 pounds per gallon. With two real people aboard, it won't have much range...

You want idiots in the air too?

While I am looking forward to a flying car, on the condition it doesn't consume more fuel that the current automobile, I can't wonder who will be driving those things. At least with current aviation you know that people have a pilot's license and have a certain sense of wanting to live, but if I look at some of the drivers around me when I drive, then I can't help wonder whether putting these people at the helm of a flying vehicle would be such a wise thing. Imagine:

normal:
- driving instructor: look left and right before entering the intersection
- ditsy learner: ooh look at the flowers
- driving instructor: watch out for the car!!!!

flying:
- driving instructor: look all around you before crossing the vertical air junction
- ditsy learner: ohh those cars look like ants
- driving instructor: keep your altitude!!!

Back to the Future

You guys have 6 years to come up with the technology to install a hover conversion on my Delorean. I've been waiting for a long time already, so don't fail me.

Still barking up the wrong tree

Flying cars already exist. This attempt, like so many others, makes the stupid "we need a fixed wing" assumption.

This makes it a much better aircraft, but as always causes HUGE problems on the ground. It causes huge air-drag, even when foled up. They need to do it the other way. Make a good car that can also fly. Why? Because if flight is your major interest, then you always will need.

Specifically, go the powered parachute route. (Basic, non-street legal version here: http://www.easyflight.com/ [easyflight.com])

Your wing needs to be packable, not merely foldable - once. Once you do that, make it street legal, like this: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/11/the-worlds-firs.html [wired.com]

Yes, it is a pusher prop instead of the more tradional forward based properller. This means the prop is not blocking the driver's view.

But the most important thing is that wing is CHEAP, and when not being used to fly, can get packed away into the trunk of your car.

Re:I've been patiently waiting for 35 years.

Every time I turn around I see another "flying car" that just can't get off the ground financially or technically.

That would make a great line in a song, sung in a monotone

Re:I've been patiently waiting for 35 years.

I think it's a waste of time. The logistics involved with actually having a non-trivial number of these things up in the air over urban areas without mass casualties are just too difficult.

The answer to our traffic woes is probably not flying cars, but rather something like self-driving cars on defined tracks. Most of our traffic problems are caused by people following too closely and overreacting to developments ahead of them (braking harder than necessary, etc), not to mention the general scourge of distracted driving. If the whole process of freeway merging, maintaining safe distance, responding to stimuli outside the vehicle, etc, was handled by an unemotional computer (perhaps interfacing with a central traffic planning computer in more congested areas), things should smooth out.

Of course, we're still years away from that sort of computing power, but various aspects of the self-driving automobile have been under development for years, and we should eventually get there. At any rate, I find the prospect more realistic than the idea of thousands or millions of flying cars zipping around above New York City.

Re:I've been patiently waiting for 35 years.

The problem with self-driving cars is that they ALL have to be self-driving for it to work properly. I suppose you could designate certain roads as automated only, but how do you enforce it if you do?

I guess you could add sensors of some kind all around to keep the car from hitting other cars that don't report position data. But if even one of them is off calibration by a little bit.... crash. RADAR isn't great, as there just isn't enough space for independent transmitters. LIDAR might work, but has similar problems.

Re:I've been patiently waiting for 35 years.

Every time I turn around I see another "flying car" that just can't get off the ground financially or technically.

This one could possibly be different, but I'm just not holding my breath.

I think it's a waste of time. The logistics involved with actually having a non-trivial number of these things up in the air over urban areas without mass casualties are just too difficult.

I reckon for flying personal vehicles to be actually feasible you need anti-gravity, a portal powersource capable of powering said anti-gravity-device, and some sort of master control network capable of automating and coordinating all such vehicles in the air to ensure they don't collide (among other things). So I would say the likelihood of personal air vehicles becoming feasible is rather slim at the moment.

Re:I've been patiently waiting for 35 years.

Indeed, while I think flying cars like this one may find a niche. I don't think they will ever take off on a large scale.

You will still need a pilots license (albiet only a light sport pilot license asusming terrafugia meet thier weight goals). You will still need a registered airfield to take off and land legally so it will only be worth using for longer trips. Finally it is rather expensive ($200000 iirc).

So I don't see there being enough of them in they sky to have a significant impact.

Of course that doesn't mean terrafugia won't be successfull. A small buisness (Which afaict is what terrafugia are) can be perfectly successfull with a niche product.

Re:I've been patiently waiting for 35 years.

This issue gets brought up every time this thing is mentioned.

It's NOT a replacement for garden-variety cars. It's a replacement for light aircraft that solves the last mile problem and allows for home storage without living on an airport.

Re:I've been patiently waiting for 35 years.

In my case, I have a place to store an aircraft in a local home, and on my vacation property. I have a house in upstate NY which I would like to go to, but it is a 6-7 hour drive from my current location.

The ability to store this thing in my home garage, drive it to a local airport, fuel, and then fly to NY would be wonderful. I could land in a podunk airport, and drive the last 3 miles to my vacation home and store it in my garage there. I'm not too keen on arranging to park an aircraft at a field and pay a fee to do so when I could have the option of storing it in my own climate controlled garage (would it be a hangar then?)

If they can get it down to the sport craft limitations, this thing would be awesome and I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

Autonomous flight is an easier problem to solve

Everyone worries that the skies will become a deathtrap when flying cars, driven by people without pilots' licenses, hit the market. But the collision-avoidance solution is simple if they're all flying autonomously. In 2009, it's trivial for inexpensive consumer devices to communicate with each other wirelessly. Similarly, flying cars need to broadcast their positions and velocities to all other aircraft within a few km radius (via WiMAX or similar technology).

Then, all it takes are some simple "right of way" rules and a small amount of computing power to compute the slight course adjustments needed to avoid collisions, or even to avoid intersecting another aircraft's wake vortices. This will also eliminate "air lanes," and the fear of them becoming saturated with traffic. All aircraft will simply fly the shortest point-to-point great circle route, except when the computer tells it to deviate to avoid another aircraft, another aircraft's wake vortices, a region of bad weather, or an ADIZ.

Because three-dimensional airspace is so vast, it will be able to accommodate exponentially more traffic than the current "air lanes" concept.

Autonomous flight is a much easier problem to solve than autonomous ground vehicles. A large but simple database will allow the aircraft to avoid obstacles like mountains and tall structures. An autonomous ground vehicle, on the other hand, would need to tackle machine vision problems like discriminating between an actual pedestrian and a picture of human on a bus-stop advertisement.

Re:I've been patiently waiting for 35 years.

The answer to our traffic woes is probably not flying cars, but rather something like self-driving cars on defined tracks. Most of our traffic problems are caused by people following too closely and overreacting to developments ahead of them (braking harder than necessary, etc), not to mention the general scourge of distracted driving. If the whole process of freeway merging, maintaining safe distance, responding to stimuli outside the vehicle, etc, was handled by an unemotional computer (perhaps interfacing with a central traffic planning computer in more congested areas), things should smooth out.

Congratulations. You have just handed the government the ability to monitor and control the movements of everyone, everywhere. Now aren't you proud of yourself?

Re:I've been patiently waiting for 35 years.

"self-driving cars on defined tracks"

We have these. They are called "trains". And they are very efficient, too.

Re:I've been patiently waiting for 35 years.

I know at least one reporter [youtube.com] that's going to be thrilled...

Re:I've been patiently waiting for 35 years.

To me, this is more of a drive-able airplane than it is a flying car. I know, maybe there isn't any difference but to me a flying car is something that flys which replaces my car. This is something that I can drive on regular roads that replaces my airplane.

It's a different market, a different use, and a very different price point. It might succeed, but personally I still wouldn't call it a successful flying car.

Re:

Part of the pre-takeoff checklist for every aircraft I've ever seen is "FLIGHT CONTROLS: FREE AND CORRECT". You move the stick and make sure the control surfaces move in the proper direction. It's not just (or even primarily) for detecting sabotage; it's because mechanics have been known to hook cables up backwards during maintenance.

Re:What is the big deal?

No. The FAA has a new license category, I believe called Sport Light. It's easier to get and does not require an air traffic controller. This new license is what has been driving (no pun intended) the production of these new flying cars/roadable aircraft.

Re:What is the big deal?

Those who don't use their radios are indeed taking unjustified risks...but it's quite common for airplanes not to have radios at all. (Some airplanes don't even have electrical systems.) You can't assume that the pattern is empty just because nobody's talking. You have to look. Depending on the radio is just as foolish as depending solely on your own abilities to see and avoid.