Terrafugia

With so many tall buildings in the US I think its hard to find a clear space to take off ^^; Also with the recession I doubt anyone will purchase the flying car with that price......

Doesn't look too bad, and the transformation is pretty cool... but requires like a huge runway to take off and land...

i want gundam O_O

Now this is what I call the future but would it be weird if everyone has a flying car ,then the world wouldn't even need any airports.

Electric cars is also becoming popular around America and Japan. I would sure would like to try one (^_^)/ (LoL, just watched Trainman and copied this from the show)
( )
/

Reminds me of the core fighter from gundam.

does this qualify as a light aircraft requiring a GPL?
i'd sure love to try one of these out one day

Transformers more than meets the eye XD

I wonder how much the COE will be for this in Singapore....

Might work around here, unless you're around major airways ATC seems pretty relaxed. It's generally a good idea to file a flight plan though so people know if you're overdue and if they have to start looking for you. Got a friend with his CPLs (RG, CSU, IFR, Turboprop) and I remember going for flights with him when he was trying to get his hours up. Never heard him sound so professional... never heard ATC sound so relaxed. It was quite litterally "Morning, folks, it's 7am and Archerfield ATC's up, if you're out there, lemme know where you are." I've only ever flown out of uncontrolled fields so that came as a bit of a shock. Assumably it's just a little more precise at the big airports =P

Ahh, history repeating itself. Every so often someone watches the Jetsons and gets funny ideas =P Kinda dubious about the whole car/plane thing to be honest. Normally when people do crossovers what they wind up with is something that's not really good at anything. Damage would be my major concern though. Imagine if you get rear-ended by a soccer mum in an SUV, then you can't fly again untill it's been repaired... but who by? A pannel beater? An airframe specialist? More concerning would be if you had a heavy landing, I know he said it was easy but it does happen. There didn't look like there was a whole lot of travel in the shocks, so if you hit hard, you damage the thing and can't drive home. Then it's a very embarrasing phonecall to your spouse to come and get you.

All the same, it is pretty cool. I like the VTOL one from a few years back though :D

WHOA! COOL!!

Now I can see myself travelling Jakarta to Singapore whenever I want... lol..^^

I'm a pilot, and I can say there are very few legal restrictions outside of congested airspaces. However, I know how crowded it is in Japan, and the geography doesn't lend itself well to so much freedom. There just isn't the room for a lot of uncontrolled airspace. That being said, I don't see why tons of forms should be required to fly, unless the government is nickel and dime-ing pilots to poverty.

There are lots of roads away from cities that do not have telephone poles and electric wires over them but always somewhere each county will have the high power lines crossing. I am willing to bet this version of the car doesn't really go as high as common piper planes do. Locally I bet a load of drug smugglers might try it out to 'leap' the boarder checks and fences (South Texas Mexican Boarder). For the rest of us the Jetsons flying car thing is still a few hundred years off. I've been following the news leaks on this car for a while and it was neat to see the picture if it pulling into a common house garage. Remember these guys in these cars have to land with no airport tower or airport radar assisting them on probably non lighted roads as well that would have traffic on them so they will probably die by crashing because when they need to land no visible empty stretch of road is ready.

Good Luck With That One.

well the car would be convenient and all but unless more people purchase these cars forcing the government to create new take off/landing air space laws to accomadate this new industry which really transcends into a proxy of vice versa between people who would purchase these cars and accomodations in the air space law system i dont see this being a practical reality in the near future

I see a lot of problems with this, especially in terms of safety. Just imagine your engines stopping suddenly while in midair and you had to jump off from the aircraft and deploy your parachute O_o

There are already a lot of nuisance drivers in the streets. I would like them to REMAIN on the streets, please, and not flying above me LOL XD

Is this the final proto-type? I seen the first one 3 years ago.

Wow, the price is very affordable for such a gadget~~~~~~~~ From what I remember, if it doesn't fly higher than a certain altitude, the driver dont need to apply for a pilot license.

I interned for a NASA researcher that was working on this kind of stuff, making general aviation planes more accessible to the general public by making them easier to fly, require less runway to take off, revitalize the hundreds or thousands of small airports across the US, etc. Cool to see something like this start to become available.

Definately not something I'd think you'd see a lot of in Japan or even Europe, with the density, but it's definately feasible in the US and probably would also work pretty well in less-developed parts of the world.

There are already too many idiots driving around on the road as is, I see no good coming from giving people the ability to fly.
Sorry, idiot drivers are one of the things that really annoy me.

That being said, I think that car/plane needs more anime decals. ^^

now that we have a plane-car we just need a submarine car a la James Bond.

Looks as the SD version of a normal plane.

Raptor in BSG, anyone? ^^;

Danny

"Also hear you need to..."

I think you meant HERE

I also make that mistake...

Does it fly any higher, or does it just hover like in the video?

Eclair: There are NOT so many Tall buildings in the U.S. There are certainly some famously dense population centers like New York city, but most of the country is pretty open once you get outside of those high-population areas. I live in Texas and I've got to say that there are lots of wide-open spaces here. And when it comes to flying "experimental/hobby aircraft" you don't even need a license.

lol good idea but um... once you take off from a normal street how do you land? I'm guessing it counts as an Airplane with a car mode so people can't just fly it from any street,

Don't know if this is practical enough go get popular..

That is one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

Hell, we are in the 2000s, it's about time we had flying cars.

I'm still holding out for one of those sweet holographic phones from Macross Frontier. :S Or Holograms in general.

forms before each flight? what a hassle. might as well buy a normal plane and fly that instead of a car/plane.

There is a flying car in Guiness' book of world records. That one works as a boat as well so from that point of view Terrafugia aren't that good. However I think Terrafugia is way better when it's flying.

I'm happy that it's not that easy to get permission to fly. We all know that it's bad for the environment.

^^ saw previous news about it, But think it's still quite far from people can really flying them all around.

who would buy one any ways.

It's quite an old idea to fly by using car but hey! The car just flew a mile or 2 then It landed again.

Flying enthusiast might buy them but it still not practical enough to use in our normal life style.

Japan airspace are crowded because you can ride an airplane from tokyo to yokohama and that's near!

Not sure if anybody has seen it before but this has already been done. =/ As far back as the 1930's IIRC. I am sure that it was nowhere near as advanced as this but this is just history repeating itself. Another gimmicky vehicle which will quickly become another financial failure.

Pretty cool...I pity the next POST OF INTEREST! (^ ^)

This is just an attempt to update an old idea;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Aerocar

M.A.S.K

I just flap my wings... cause I'm an angel. 0=)

Was wondering when this would come out ^^

that would be awesome to have one of those but its too bad im afraid of heights

Imagine parking that at work think of the looks you'd get

what we called it car or a plane ???

I don't see thos... taking off... in the U.S.

Sorry, had to do it.

Wait, put down those tomatoes....

I'd like to think this could become normal life, but with that comes all the terrible, clueless drivers and tons of new flight regulations.
You'd have bubblehead chicks ramming their plars into their cheating boyfriend's houses, you'd have grandma stuck up in a tree stories... it'd be a freakin' MESS!

Pretty much, tons of people disgruntled over this or that would be using them as projectiles.

Know when this will become the norm? When home missile defense systems do.

wow,anyone might cinsidering getting one to use for everyday life?
but the government will be in a chaos here when making the flight regulations
plus....
indonesian drivers are crazy,some of my friends started driving cars when they're 12
can you imagine a 12 year old kid flying this thing?

We have enough idiot drivers on the road as it is. Can you imagine what would happen if some 18 year old got drunk at a party and tried flying home in one of those things but wound up crashing into someone's house? We'd need some pretty insane restrictions before I'd be comfortable with those things loose in the general populace.

Others have mentioned the potential dangers of having everyone flying - people crashing into each other, trying to put on makeup and talking on their cellphones at 300 ft (soon to be zero) and, y'know, the works.

But has anyone considered what driving this thing would be like? I doubt that thing's road legal. Canada road regulations for one requires bigger bumpers. And if that material's light enough to fly, I really, REALLY don't want to see what the car's going to look like after a fender bender with an SUV.

The future is now!

Seriously though, I'm willing to bet that sometime within this century or the next, technology like this is going to become a standard.

pretty cool, but the folded wings creates quite a blind spot...

I'd still go for a normal Fixed wing aircraft ;)

I'd prefer a golf cart that doubles as a small helicopter. That way myself and one other would have a reason to golf. >:3

WTF, It's not taking off... it was barely hovring only few metres off ground.... Is that the highest it can flew??

Great................. Now when the car breaks down, it can crash right into a house or on top of someone. Imagine a drunk driver in one of these flying cars.... -_-

Hmmmm... First impression - Cool!
But then after giving it some thought, it is not a very safe idea after all.

Pilots are required to go through very stringent training before being allowed to be in the cockpit.
So first problem we have here is the licensing issues.

Secondly, if these cars can fly all over, there is high chances that there would be mid-air collision. Even if they are controlled by ATC, it would only increase the already heavy workload of ATC.

And thirdly, flying is not an easy task. I am a student pilot and I am learning to fly at an International Airport. Flying among those commercial aircrafts is not an easy task. It is often crazy and hectic! Imagine next time we have hundreds of cars flying all over. Its a mayhem!

Fourth, things that fly consume fuel like mad. For example, a Boeing 747 will consume somewhere about 13000kg of fuel for a climb to 33000ft. And this climb will take about 40-50 minutes. Of course I am talking about heavy aircrafts here but imagine thousands of flying cars in the future! It would just deplete our fuel reserves even faster provided no alternative fuel is found yet. >.<

Sorry for getting technical but this is just my opinion. >.< I just feel that flying and driving cant be combined together. It is 2 totally different things.

By the way, Danny, if you have the time, maybe you can go get yourself a Private Pilot License. Flying is fun and I am sure you will enjoy it. About filling in loads of forms, its not really that many. ^^,

super cool!!!

It doesn't look like it was flying high in the first vid though...