Flying cars are coming, but are we ready?

Airborne police car and taxi, circa 2260, according to The Fifth Element.

I want my flying car. According to Blade Runner, the gritty streets of Los Angeles will be policed by flying vehicles called spinners by 2019. By 2062, to keep up with the Jetsons, every family should have a bubble-topped flying car. The Fifth Element gave us a vision of the future that seems to have become grimier and strangely more retro, but the narrow slices of sky between the towering, dilapidated buildings is filled with flying taxis and cop cars. I'd even settle for a hacked DeLorean, especially if it's tricked-out with a time travel package. For years, we have been asking why the flying cars aren't here yet.

Terrafugia's vision for the future of personal transportation, the TF-X™ is a semi-autonomous four-seat hybrid electric flying car with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities.

Actually, the flying cars are here. And here. The latest concept car from BMW, a futuristic Mini Cooper, even has a transparent, bubble-like top that is eliciting comparison to the vision in the Hanna Barbera classic The Jetsons. (Time travel still appears to be out of reach.) But are we ready for them? Can you imagine your teenager getting a pilot's license? And it will take a lot more power to defy gravity than to power wheels. Where will that come from and how will it affect our energy infrastructure? Do we actually want to let people—including law enforcement—fly at low altitudes overhead? What about privacy? What about the potential that vehicles could be appropriated as weapons by terrorists?

"Mark my words: a combination airplane and motorcar is coming. You may smile, but it will come." (Henry Ford, 1940)

The flying car idea has been around as long as cars, and possibly people dreamed of flying carriages before that (which would certainly have been accompanied by their own hazards!). Henry Ford experimented with small, personal aircraft as early as the 1920s. He hoped to develop a flying car that would be as affordable and widely adopted as his Model T. Unfortunately, the prototypes (really very small, one-seater planes) were not terribly successful, described by Charles Lindbergh as "the worst plane I ever flew." A crash killed the test pilot and put a damper on the program.

Ford's Sky Flivver was a fixed wing aircraft, meaning that it would have had to attain specific forward speeds to remain airborne, which would tend to make taking off, landing, and negotiating a sky full of traffic more complicated. Licensing and regulation were less restrictive in the dawn of aviation, but one would certainly need to be an accomplished pilot to use this type of craft for personal travel. The wingspan would also have made it less realistic for road travel in today's world of congested roads.

Aeromobil expects to bring its first model to market in two to three years. The craft will be street-legal when the wings are folded, and require a pilot's license to fly.

The first models from Aeromobil and Terrefugia will also be more like conventional airplanes, with folding wings and wheels to make them drivable. However, Terrefugia is planning its next generation TF-X to incorporate folding, tiltable propellers, permitting it to takeoff and land vertically, as well as hover and glide. The addition of self-driving technology will simplify the requirements for piloting these craft, as the computer will control most of the decisions about takeoff, flight path, and landing.

The problem is that — despite a near-perfect safety record for semi- and fully-autonomous cars to date — people don't trust them. Are they more likely to trust an autopilot in the sky? And what if concerns about hacking internet-connected driving technology are realized? Flying car manufacturers will have to overcome both perceived and real security concerns in order to court consumers for their new technology.

In the Netherlands, PAL-V has based its flying car on a combination gyroscope and motorcycle.

Power is another issue. The first generation Terrafugia cars have gasoline engines; they are expected to have a range of 400 miles on an 87 liter tank. The next generation will have a hybrid engine, with batteries charging during flight. Other versions of the technology are expected to be fully electric. A lot of progress has been made recently in the technologies needed for reliable electric vehicle operation, including steady advances in battery technology, but batteries are still heavy and their capacity might be expected to be reduced at the lower temperatures experienced during flight. Like other electric vehicles, these cars will represent a non-stationary load on the electric grid, since they might be charged in different locations from one day to the next. If they were to become truly mainstream, this variability would complicate electric power planning and operation.

Moller International is developing the Skycar200, a two-passenger ethanol/electric hybrid vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.

Most fuel options are highly volatile, ranging from gasoline to ethanol and hydrogen cells. This means that a fueled aircraft — even a small one — is a potential weapon of destruction, without further alteration. If it can be completely computer-guided, it could perhaps also be programmed to crash land at a specific location, without requiring a suicide pilot. Of course, flying cars will be a lot more expensive than improvised explosives or even crop dusting aircraft for quite some time, so we probably don't have to worry too much about terrorist appropriating them yet.

However, a look at the controversies surrounding the use and potential misuse of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS or more colloquially, drones) suggests that we will need to deal with significant legal and policy issues before flying cars become commonplace. Concerns about air rights and privacy will be exacerbated if the public and law enforcement are meeting in three dimensions. The Federal Aviation Administration has been slow to adapt its regulations to deal with the explosion of UAS users, including hobbyists, public safety professionals, and commercial applicants. It is unlikely that the evolutionary rate of bureaucracy will accelerate to cope with flying cars.

The technology for flying cars is coming together, with improvements in materials, batteries, global positioning services, and autonomous navigation. Tough challenges remain in the human systems that will have to be altered before the personal aircraft can really take flight.

Source: Flying cars are coming, but are we ready?