The recent announcement by DeLorean Aerospace that it's developing what many are referring to as a "flying car" has garnered a lot of attention. For starters, yes, it's that "DeLorean." The start-up aviation company is run by a nephew of the infamous car maker John DeLorean whose cool gull-wing-door speedster starred in the mega hit Back to the Future. It was in that film, you might remember, that the famous DeLorean time machine car doesn't really need any stinking roads, to mix our movie metaphors.
Courtesy of DeLorean Aerospace The DeLorean flying car, called the DR-7, and it won't need roads either. Good thing. It doesn't have wheels or tires. In fact, the company is talking about it not as a car at all but an airplane that can do what cars do only in the air, kind of like, we don't know, an airplane? It won't be just any flying airplane, though. The DeLorean features a pair of ducted fans, one in front and one in back of its all-composite airframe and a pair of tiny wings including a canard that the company says makes the craft stall resistant. A Wired magazine writer pointed out have the advantage of having wings that the DR-7 would be able to glide in case of power failure. Any guesses on the glide ratio here?
The company hasn't put a timetable on certification or production dates yet, but experts quoted by that same Wired article offer that such flying airplanes could be plying the busy airspace over I-95 as soon as five years from now.
Learn more at DeLorean Aerospace.
Source: There's Now A DeLorean Flying Car!
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