Flying Car Debuts at New York Auto Show

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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The New York International Auto Show will debut a high flying car….literally. The Terrafugia Roadable Aircraft is a hybrid auto/airplane that is comfortable on the road or in the air and carries a high flying price tag of $279k. Pre-orders are being taken now, so you had better hurry. :D
 
I think flying cars are always invented in places where they have no weather, california arizona etc. Where I live a flying car would come in handy almost never.
 
I'm calling it. Some rich dumbass is going to buy one of these, use an interstate as a runway and either have nowhere to land, or will land and then crash into something.
 
There are so many things wrong with that design. Hopefully they have Aerospace Engineers on their team. And if they already do, well, I don't know how they even graduated.

Biggest problem and biggest safety risk, the wings don't have enough clearance on landing. Sure, if you're a perfect pilot, then no problem. But, very few are perfect pilots.

Still a problem, but not as big as the previous issue. MAJOR DRAG due to a poorly designed front.

But then again, it's a car with a gimmick.
 
cactus said:
So it is a mediocre car and a mediocre plane all in one...
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Ya no thanks, i'll just wait for this to come out...

Jetsons.jpg
 
How ironic, I just had a dream I had one of these last night. Pull for up, push for down.
Say, I could make some pretty good money turning it into a taxi.
 
metril said:
There are so many things wrong with that design. Hopefully they have Aerospace Engineers on their team. And if they already do, well, I don't know how they even graduated.

Biggest problem and biggest safety risk, the wings don't have enough clearance on landing. Sure, if you're a perfect pilot, then no problem. But, very few are perfect pilots.

Still a problem, but not as big as the previous issue. MAJOR DRAG due to a poorly designed front.

But then again, it's a car with a gimmick.
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I personally love the high end steering wheel stabilizer that they use at 2:17 in the vid.
 
Such a deadly stupid idea.

Some people can't even drive to the grocery store and back without their cars getting dinged so when you're up at 10,000 feet you'd like to hope that nothing got smacked out of alignment when you hit a pothole earlier.
 
With all said and done insulting the idead of a flying car, I'm sure my uncle on one of them isles near PEI would use that (he's a pilot to) other than a 1-2 hour barge to the mainland. ;) Or wait a week for the store restock...

Just saying...
 
BigJayDogg3 said:
I'm calling it. Some rich dumbass is going to buy one of these, use an interstate as a runway and either have nowhere to land, or will land and then crash into something.
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Yea, given how awful most drivers are in the US in navigating 2 dimensions...adding a 3rd simply seems stupid.
 
It's a start but still too far from being practical! the folding wings could have folded flat like a bed on a truck instead of sticking up in the air. There's just too much drag for the design. But then it's a prototype so improvements are still begging for more.
 
Needs to be VTOL and self flying, otherwise a flying car would be dangerous and not make much sense.
 
I've seen flying cars since 2004 in magazines, online, TV shows, etc.... about fucking time! It was supposed to be by 2014 they said "FOR SURE' -- guess they were right.
 
And I saw this a year or two ago... the guy said all you need is an easy small pilot license and the rest is like a normal car. Drive it right onto any local airport :)
 
I never understood the obsession with "Flying Car".

An ultralight helicopter is about a hundred times more practical than any car OR plane.
 
I know its 300k but still.. thats kinda cheap for a plane / car, cheap as in "life risking"
 
MMAOmegaRED said:
Such a deadly stupid idea.

Some people can't even drive to the grocery store and back without their cars getting dinged so when you're up at 10,000 feet you'd like to hope that nothing got smacked out of alignment when you hit a pothole earlier.
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Seriously, for 90% of the population merging onto the freeway at the correct speed or making a left turn in their own lane are way too much to ask. A plane? Fuhgeddaboutit.
 
Just what we need, 90-year olds in their flying caddies doing below the minimum flight speed on the express flyway. :eek:
 
With the amount of dumbasses on the road today. This technology will never come to fruition. If it does no one except the super elite could afford insurance.
 
metril said:
There are so many things wrong with that design. Hopefully they have Aerospace Engineers on their team. And if they already do, well, I don't know how they even graduated.

Biggest problem and biggest safety risk, the wings don't have enough clearance on landing. Sure, if you're a perfect pilot, then no problem. But, very few are perfect pilots.

Still a problem, but not as big as the previous issue. MAJOR DRAG due to a poorly designed front.

But then again, it's a car with a gimmick.
Click to expand...

The wings have quite a bit of dihedral on them, you'd need to be at quite an angle to clip them, though top mounted would seem a bit more logical.

The drag, meh, it doesn't look that bad to me, there's actual planes with more bluff front ends than that.

Its not practical of course, but mainly because a flying car in and of itself is not practical more than anything. Though I guess it would cut down on bad drivers, coz, ya know, they'd be dead after their first flight.
 
A couple things:

1. You must have an honest-to-goodness pilot's license to fly this thing. This is not something that random people will fly.

2. This is half the price of a new Cessna 182 - roughly the going price of a 10-year-old used Cessna 182.

And, yeah, you'd have to be a hell of a pilot to land that thing in mediocre weather without banging the wings into the ground. Those are just insanely low to the ground. (And those struts have nearly no give on landing - those are going to be some back-pain-inducing landings. I know my second-ever landing probably shortened me by an inch, and that was with heavy duty shocks absorbing a lot of the impact.)

That said, I still want one!

And you'd need two sets of insurance: Standard auto insurance (which, considering the cost of the vehicle won't be cheap,) and standard aviation insurance (which should, if anything, be slightly cheaper than average given the low price of it as an aircraft.)
 
It's pretty neat, but I'd rather have the $80,000 Maverick flying car. Sure, the wing don't fold down, I'm sure the max speed is alot lower, but honestly the cockpit seems a lot more friendly. Seems like it would be a lot easier for people to fly as well. And when you get tired of the flying gimmick, it looks like a decently quick (under 4s 0-60 if I recall) desert buggy as well...

That being said, I don't understand why you'd want one of these instead of a Porsche 911/whatever and a 1/2 or 1/4 share in a decent small aircraft. I'd imagine the load capacity on this thing is pretty pathetic. And with the winds we have here in Nevada, I wouldn't want to land one with wings that low...
 
NKDietrich said:
I never understood the obsession with "Flying Car".

An ultralight helicopter is about a hundred times more practical than any car OR plane.
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No doubt, but see comment below...

CharonPDX said:
A couple things:

1. You must have an honest-to-goodness pilot's license to fly this thing. This is not something that random people will fly.

2. This is half the price of a new Cessna 182 - roughly the going price of a 10-year-old used Cessna 182.

And, yeah, you'd have to be a hell of a pilot to land that thing in mediocre weather without banging the wings into the ground. Those are just insanely low to the ground. (And those struts have nearly no give on landing - those are going to be some back-pain-inducing landings. I know my second-ever landing probably shortened me by an inch, and that was with heavy duty shocks absorbing a lot of the impact.)

That said, I still want one!
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Helloooooo! :D Totally.
 
kandor said:
I think flying cars are always invented in places where they have no weather, california arizona etc. Where I live a flying car would come in handy almost never.
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Woburn MA doesn't have any real weather?
 
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