This is the old-school (practical) idea of a flying car but due to e-VTOL, even Terrafugia has moved to other designs.Īt present, only a very few designs have wheels or seem to have a plan for them. One of the oldest designs, the Terrafugia Transition, flies strictly as a fixed wing airplane whose wings fold up so that it can drive on roads with its wheels. The Terrafugia transition is a traditional fixed wing airplane that flies on gasoline, except it. They have no wheels and can't move on land at all. Some designs, like the Opener Blackfly, can also land on water and grass. This solves the problems of weight but has a lot of complexity, and you can only land where there are pods.Ī full road vehicle faces a major challenge that road vehicles must be certified for safety on the road, and this requires a lot of weight. The rotors detach and fly away to land on another vehicle, while the pod clamps into the base and can drive away. So your pod flies with gear above it, and then it is landed by placing into the driving base. One odd hybrid approach from Airbus is to have a "passenger pod" which can either be picked up by the flying part, or be deposited on a driving cradle with wheels. The car is a car and the plane is a plane. The flying vehicle can land and you step out of it into a robotaxi. Instead, it may be best to say a flying vehicle should be a flying vehicle and a car should be a car. We're right on the edge with giving these things a decent range and payload, and wheels, motors and everything needed to be road legal create a serious challenge. Every kg costs a kg of payload or battery. On the other hand, wheels and the ability to drive add moving parts, complexity and worst of all, weight. They can take off and go to other lots when they need to wait if they need to clear a heliport, but they can't take you on the road. They can move in open areas, hover-flying to the charging or refueling ports, but can't be anywhere they can't land at. If there are a million of them in a city, there's no place to easily put them. Many of the designs, while not large, still are the size of 4 or 6 cars. One big issue is where you put all the vehicles if they don't have the ability to drive. Others plan for no wheels - the vehicle sits where it lands. Others want the vehicle to be able to just make small movements at the landing port, for example to move to parking facilities or charging facilities. Some teams are taking the term "flying car" literally - they want a vehicle that can move on the ground on wheels, and get small enough to drive on roads and park in automobile parking facilities and even home garages. Today, fuel cells are quite expensive, so you still need batteries for the VTOL and emergency landings. It's also not easy to find it or refuel with it. Hydrogen is a very dense fuel when it comes to weight, though it does require bulky tanks. People don't want to develop new transportation that pollutes more than what we used before.Īnother alternative, not yet common, is the use of fuel cells. In addition, this approach is hardly green. Electrical recharge stations are easier to get approval for. At the same time, it's not as easy to put gasoline refueling stations everywhere, including on the tops of buildings and at private landing spots. Gasoline is popular because you can get it anywhere. Because you now are less concerned with generator failure, you can have a motor that's not nearly as robust and expensive as regular aircraft engines. You still need the batteries for the peak power of VTOL, and to get you down safely if the generator should fail. One alternative is to install a generator, usually gasoline or Jet fuel powered, in addition to the batteries. This allows a whole new kind of VTOL different from old-school helicopters. Today, batteries are only barely good enough, so range and size are limited. All-electric or hybridĬentral to the VTOL revolution is the use of electric propulsion. It's not ideal comfort for the pilot but it means no moving parts except the rotors and control surfaces. It takes off with the rotors vertical and the pilot leaning far back, and tilts the entire plane, including the pilot, until the wings and rotors are horizontal and the pilot is facing forward and a bit down. It has two wings with 8 rotors mounted on them, with the wings at an angle to the fuselage. The Blackly "Opener" offers an interesting alternative. The whole aircraft tilts for fixed wing flight. The Opener "Blackfly" is flying today, and they claim it will be for sale in 2019.
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