If it’s a flying CAR, how come it has to be towed to and from it’s designated take off and landing sites? The whole point of a flying car is that you can go from ground travel to air travel without much effort.
This isn’t a expensive flying car. It’s a cheap aircraft that an inexperienced and untrained pilot is going to be allowed to fly if they can cough up $200k.
There is no legal definition for a flying car, so they can use the term if they want. It’s like the term AI that gets thrown around a lot, but actually people mean an LLM, but technically even a checkers program is in the AI category.
The USA industry term is a “roadable aircraft” and legal is also moving to that term. In Europe the legal term is FlyDrive vehicle. And the thing in the article is an SC-VTOL (special condition) in Europe and powered-lift aircraft in USA.
I don’t think that’s the point of the comment.
Buyers don’t need a pilot’s license to operate the aircraft, though they must complete training and take an FAA knowledge test.
That’s absolutely fucking insane. How did the FAA approve this? The only saving grace here is that the $200k price tag means few, if any, will be sold to random idiots who want a flying car.
It’s an ultralight. You don’t need a pilots license to fly one in the US. You can even build one yourself if you want to. You don’t even need any inspection or airworthiness certificate. Since they can’t legally be flown over populated areas, it’s unlikely for anyone except the pilot to get injured or killed.
There are lots of fairly standard high end cars that go for more money than that. So the potential is quite high for these to sell well
That’s horrifying to think about. Most people seem to barely be able to handle 2 dimensions while driving a car.
Yeah no kidding…
A high end luxury car has a lot more utility than this thing. This is more like a $200k atv or snowmobile (ie, a very expensive toy)
That seems to make sense and maybe most people will think that and this will stay niche. However I can see a legitimate use case of skipping traffic in a large city which gives significant utility. Also many people own expensive toys like toyhaulers and Canam Mavericks which come out over $200k in total. What I’m saying is I really won’t be surprised if these get incredibly popular.
It also means the people operating them will have a high threshold for consequences and maybe not care so much about the community.
Because anything and everything about this administration is for sale.
Flying car
So an aircraft?
The only thing I consider to be a flying car is when the technology is completely different from what we have now.
Tired of these plane/copter/drone-type vehicles that they claim are also cars.
We need Star Wars/Fifth Element/Back to the Future II/Blade Runner-type vehicles.
30 minutes range. Which, in practice, probably means ten.
In practice that is zero - you are not allowed to take off unless you have enough fuel to fly for an hour after landing. flying is safe in large part because of hard learned rules like this.
I’m sure that doesn’t apply to ultralights.
that depends on the pilot. it doesn’t apply to bold pilots. There are bold pilots and old pilots - but no old and bold pilots.
I’ve never seen a rule requiring any specific fuel reserve except for when filing IFR where you need enough fuel to get to your destination, and alternate, and still have 45 minutes of fuel.
91.151 Fuel requirements for flight in VFR conditions.
(a) No person may begin a flight in an airplane under VFR conditions unless (considering wind and forecast weather conditions) there is enough fuel to fly to the first point of intended landing and, assuming normal cruising speed—
(1) During the day, to fly after that for at least 30 minutes; or
(2) At night, to fly after that for at least 45 minutes.
(b) No person may begin a flight in a rotorcraft under VFR conditions unless (considering wind and forecast weather conditions) there is enough fuel to fly to the first point of intended landing and, assuming normal cruising speed, to fly after that for at least 20 minutes.
I had not heard that, thank you for sharing. I just go by IFR standards or better for my personal limits, so this never came up.
Note that those are minimums. The pilots I know try to be well above the minimums as a personal rule. Landing without fuel is something they practice in the simulator, not something they ever want to try in real world conditions.
Ya absolutely, I never want a fuel exhaustion event. Always put more in than necessary
These should be banned in cities immediately. The danger here seems insane.
As someone posted elsewhere, this is an ultralight aircraft and is therefore forbidden from flying over populated areas.
Oh that’s good news. However their stated business model is in cities so I expect heavy lobbying to lift that ban to start. It could be worthwhile to have layered bans at different levels of government to provide protection in case one layer gets paid off.
While your cynicism is well-deserved in the US, Urban Air Mobility is an area of regulatory development. EASA and FAA are both actively working in this area, and VTOL and eVTOL aircraft have their own existing pilot certifications for both manned and remote flights. Lobbying has had very limited success with FAA and EASA, and they remain some of the most heavily regulated organizations.
The idea that these vehicles will ever be adequately safe, quiet, or efficient is very dubious. Any regulatory agency that isn’t outright rejecting them at this point should be viewed with suspicion.
If I’m ever proven wrong then great but I don’t see that happening for decades at minimum.
A passenger car crashed through the window of my local grocery store a few months ago. I think people see small aircraft as this great threat, but forget that cars have been quite capably killing people for over a century. They aren’t very safe, quiet, or efficient anyway, so I’m happy to see other technology getting taken seriously.
This is exactly what terrifies me though. Cars are already incredibly dangerous. Now make them 5x as fast and more difficult to control, and allow them to go anywhere and imagine the carnage.
The current regulations do consider density (people, buildings) when designating flight restrictions. Heavier small aircraft have to avoid certain areas because of the extra risk. This kind of single-passenger aircraft is way lighter than a car and wouldn’t be allowed over urban and residential areas, for example. I agree that CHANGES to the existing regulations could potentially add risk, but currently we’re ok and those changes happen slowly and are evidence-based. FAA and EASA don’t use the public as a testing area. It’s not as dystopian as the media might make you think. HTH.
People will die, rather quickly, and that will be the end of it.
Their privacy policy is stupid. Here’s an archive link, so you can avoid la time.
Looking at some of those photos, I guess ‘vertical’ is also applied, at least partially, to the vehicles orientation 😳
I can’t wait until some influencer is half way from LA to Vegas when the low battery dummy light comes on.
Scott Manley has a video on this company and flew it himself, he was quite impressed.
