First flight of the Terrafugia flying car

haimoc

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WilliamM2

Not much of a flight.

bobman1235

I don't really understand the need for a flying car. No matter what, any kind of dual purpose machine is not going to be great at either task, since there are sacrifices to make it able to do both things. It seems much more efficient and useful to just have separate cars and planes (barring some kind of magic propulsion / levitation system that gets invented). Anything else is just a novelty.

zingo

Give me a car with vertical lift-off and I'm in!

Poee7R

I sit in traffic everyday amazed at the things I see.

I could only imagine the nightmare of having that all going on, a couple hundred feet in the air.

Aside from the practicality of it, it is freaking awesome haha.


Dave

haimoc

http://www.terrafugia.com/
http://www.terrafugia.com/photogallery.html



A US company that creates it..

WilliamM2

Something tells me the FAA isn't going to allow these to fly around anyways.

cnh

WilliamM2 wrote: »

Something tells me the FAA isn't going to allow these to fly around anyways.

An excellent point

cnh

tonyb

Guys,herd the CEO of this company chatting about it.You have to use an airport,even small private ones will do.Thing is,you can fly,land,and drive off to your destination.With a sport flying license,you only need 20 hours to be certified to fly this thing.That alone is scarey,when you think of all the possibilities,crashes,terrorist,etc.At 200 g's a copy,some bonehead rich guy will buy one for his son,who will crash it into the mall of america,then the ban will be on.

bobman1235

tonyb wrote: »

Guys,herd the CEO of this company chatting about it.You have to use an airport,even small private ones will do.Thing is,you can fly,land,and drive off to your destination.With a sport flying license,you only need 20 hours to be certified to fly this thing.That alone is scarey,when you think of all the possibilities,crashes,terrorist,etc.At 200 g's a copy,some bonehead rich guy will buy one for his son,who will crash it into the mall of america,then the ban will be on.

It's not like they're inventing the "sport flying license" for this vehicle; the license already exists, and you could get one yourself right now, rent a plane that fits that designation, and crash it into the mall of America. This particular car doesn't really add or subtract anything from that equation, does it?

WilliamM2

If you have to go to the airport to take off or land, doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of a car/plane?

haimoc

WilliamM2 wrote: »

If you have to go to the airport to take off or land, doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of a car/plane?

According to the site:

Why would I get a Transition® instead of a car and a plane?
Having ground mobility and the ability to fly integrated into the same vehicle provides new options for travel that are not available with two separate vehicles: If bad weather is encountered en route, the pilot can land and drive without worrying about ground transportation or having to return to pick up his plane. At the destination airport the pilot can fold the wings and drive off the airfield without having to move bags or arrange for additional transportation. Driving and flying can be combined between multiple airports as it is not necessary to take off and land at the same field.

The Transition® also reduces the cost of ownership of an airplane by burning automotive gasoline, parking in your garage at home instead of renting a hangar, and nearly eliminating ground transportation costs.

CaligulaPolk

i think its awesome idea, but dangerous, car breaks down on middle of road, and how can we protect ourselves if broken car dropping out of sky.

Excellent idea but skeptic about this...

tonyb

bobman1235 wrote: »

It's not like they're inventing the "sport flying license" for this vehicle; the license already exists, and you could get one yourself right now, rent a plane that fits that designation, and crash it into the mall of America. This particular car doesn't really add or subtract anything from that equation, does it?

Your right,but a plane is kept at an airport,and some FAA rules need to be followed.In this thing,you could take off at night on a stretch of road,nobody the wiser,know what I mean??

bobman1235

A decent enough point, but a friend of mine had a pilot's license for a while, and I went up a few times with him, and we often left from completely deserted small-town airports with zero personnel present, no flight plan, nothing like that. I'm just saying the loopholes are there already and this carplane changes very little.