Flying Car: Difference between revisions
other reasons why a flying car is impractical
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|"''Roads? Where we're going we don't need -- roads.''"
So your hero needs a [[Cool Car]]. But what do you do when missiles, [[Nitro Boost]] and [[James Bond|ejector seats]] don't suffice to show just how much of a [[Badass]] he is? Simple: make it a flying car.
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The lack of flying cars in [[Real Life]] is a [[I Want My Jetpack|common complaint]]. The fact that they would for all intents and purposes be personal aircraft, and require the same regulations and specialized skill as planes and helicopters is a big reason why we haven't seen any in our lifetimes. Several flying cars ''have been invented'' in [[Real Life]], but [[Awesome but Impractical|the concept has always ended up getting scrapped]] because said flying cars used up a ''lot'' of fuel... and had a penchant for crash-landing when they ran out. Most fictional cars [[Hand Wave]] this by saying something about an [[Anti Gravity]] element in place.
{{examples}}▼
In addition, flying cars make a lot of noise. Living next to a crowded highway is already bad enough. Now imagine dealing with that noise ''everywhere'' you go. People already have trouble driving their car in two dimensions; introduce a third one and it's a recipe for disaster. A slight bump to the wings of a flying car is a ticket to the nearest car repair shop. We can't have flying cars zapping around everywhere the same way we only have cars driving on roads. If flying cars are unregulated, there's a high chance they'll crash into each other, so we have to dedicate airways to them the same way we do with planes — at this point, you're better off buying a regular car. Needless to say, flying cars are simply impractical. But the wonderful world of entertainment ''isn't'' real life, so creators can make whatever they want — so long it [[Rule of Cool|looks cool]].
== Anime & Manga ==▼
[[Flying Bike]] is either a subtrope or a related trope, depending on how you view the relationship between cars and motorcycles in Real Life.
▲{{examples}}
* [[Team Chef|Satsuki]] of ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' has a flying ''Dining-Car Restaurant''. Having two [[Mad Scientist]] friends sure is handy.
* Flying cars exist in ''[[Silent Moebius]],'' but have yet to replace ground vehicles. The AMP uses 'spinner' patrol cars and Rally has a flying limousine.
* Wallace's Air Car in ''[[Pokémon Special]]''. It can even be controlled remotely, a fact Ruby exploited twice during the final battles of the Ruby/Sapphire [[Story Arc]].
* There's lots of flying cars in ''[[Dragonball Z]]''.
* ''[[
* ''Bakusou Kyoudai Let's & Go!'' has Magnum mini 4WD series' "Magnum Tornado", the [[Nitro Boost]] making them able to fly and spin in the sky for a short time.
* ''[[Trinity Blood]]'' has an aerodynamics-challenged version.
== Comic Books ==
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* The Supermobile was a flying car piloted by [[Superman]]. [[Merchandise-Driven|Why would Superman need a flying car, you ask?]]
** The comics' excuse was that the Supermobile was invented by Superman at a time he'd lost his powers, and needed something to help him fight Amazo. The car was capable of duplicating most of his powers, was constructed of a super-hard metal, and could shield him from kryptonite.
* The Batcraft flown by Jim Gordon III, in the computer-generated [[Cyberpunk]] [[Elseworld]] comic ''[[Batman
** In [[Grant Morrison]]'s ''Batman and Robin'', Dick Grayson and Damien Wayne have a flying Batmobile.
* A main staple in a lot of Antarctic Press comics. Asrial from ''[[Ninja High School]]'' converts a junked car into one as part of a challenge if she qualified for a job as a mechanic. It later used as the protagonist main transportation around town. Gina from ''[[Gold Digger (Comic Book)|Gold Digger]]'' patented (and often destroyed) "Gina Mobile" can turn into one when needed. And the heroes main transportation in the first half of ''[[I Hunt Monsters]]'' have one named Kirby that they use to get around the world.
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* ''[[Chassis]]'' was a comic book series built around the sport of rocket car racing.
* The Whiz Wagon, used by Jimmy Olsen and the Newsboy Legion during Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" tenure at DC in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
== Fan Works ==
* The police car on Dandond in ''[[
== Film ==
* The Spinners from ''[[Blade Runner]]''.
* In ''[[James Bond|The Man With the Golden Gun]]'', a villain escapes with a winged AMC Matador.
* ''The Flying Car'', a short film taking place in the Askewniverse.
* ''[[Back to The Future]] Part II'' makes flying cars commonplace by [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|the year 2015]].
** Apparently the writers really liked this idea, because it was one of the few things from the original script of the first movie to survive.
* ''[[The Fifth Element]]'' had lots of these, of course.
* In ''[[The Last Starfighter]]'', Centauri's [[Cool Car]] is both a
* Luke's speeder in ''[[Star Wars]]'' was only ever a few inches off the ground, but it did fly, technically...
** Also, the Coruscant speeder chase in ''Attack of the Clones''. Coruscant seems practically on the verge of having
** All sorts of military and civilian [[Anti Gravity|repulsorlift]] vehicles abound in the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]. Speeder bikes (from Episode VI), airspeeders, hovertrucks, pod racers, swoops...
* Lady Penelope's pink Ford limousine in the live action ''[[Thunderbirds]]'' movie.
* Establishing shots of [[San Francisco]] in the ''[[Star Trek (
** Dude, it's the ''states''. People there need the pleasure of driving like pedestrians need oxygen.
** Subverted in [[Star Trek (
* In ''[[
* Perhaps the earliest example in film would be the small personal airplanes seen flitting amongst the buildings in Fritz Lang's ''[[Metropolis]]''. They may not have looked like cars, but they seemed to fill the same function. This was probably also the [[Trope Maker]] for the whole "throw in some flying cars zipping between giant buildings to establish that we're in [[The Future]]" thing, and it remains popular to this day.
* ''[[Repo Man]]'' and the 1964 Chevrolet Malibu.
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** In ''[[Cars 2]]'', espionage agent Holly Shiftwell can fly. Mater manages to do so when he deploys both his parachute and his rocket thrusters.
* The French film ''[[Fantomas|Fantômas se déchaîne]]'' ("Fantômas Unleashed") ends with the titular villain escaping in a Citroën DS that converts into an airplane.
* Howard Stark presented a prototype in ''[[Captain America:
* The students of ''[[Sky High]]'' go to school in a flying bus.
== Literature ==
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** In the second book, Arthur Weasley enchanted a Ford Anglia to make it able to fly. [[Loophole Abuse|Because of a loophole]], it wouldn't be considered illegal as long as nobody flew on it.
* ''[[Chitty Chitty Bang Bang]]''.
* ''[[The Number of the Beast]]'' by [[Robert A. Heinlein]] features one of the coolest cars of all time: Gay Deceiver. It doesn't just fly, it flies at hypersonic speed with retractible swing wings. It is capable of vertical take-offs and landings. It can even do semiballistic sub-orbital flights just past the edge of space. Oh, and it gets upgraded with a time machine that can visit alternate universes, some of them fictional ones, including [[Land of Oz
** Pretty much all of Heinlein's "Future History" stories have flying cars. One of them (''[[The Puppet Masters (
* The ''[[In Death]]'' series, set [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]. Then, as now, cop equipment is crappy.
* The ''[[Third World Products|3rd World Products]]'' series. Though those were van to small bus size and larger.
* [[Philip K. Dick]] had "ionscraft" in ''The Ganymede Takeover''.
* Like most [[Speculative Fiction]] settings with mature [[Anti Gravity]] technology, [[Lois McMaster Bujold]]'s [[Vorkosigan Saga]] has a wide variety of flying vehicles:
** Float bikes (flying motorcycle analog)
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** Anything larger will usually have orbital capability, moving into cargo shuttle or [[Drop Ship]] territory.
* ''[[Dune]]'''s ornithopters (or just "thopter"s) probably count, although they may be more equivalent to helicopters. Note that ornithopters are a real invention, people have been attempting (and failing) to build practical ones for a century now.
* Played hilariously straight in ''[[
* The aptly named [[Xtreme Kool Letterz|SkyKar]] in ''[[Villain Dot Net|Villain.net]]''.
* The [[Insistent Terminology|volantors]] of Chasm City seen in [[Alastair Reynolds]]' ''Revelation Space'' series. Their most explicit appearance is in the novella ''Diamond Dogs''.
* Lowly Worm from the [[Richard Scarry]] books apparantly drives an apple-shaped car that also serves as a helicopter since its "leaves" actually function as the helicopter's blades. Except how the heck is he able to drive it if he doesn't have any arms?
== Live-Action TV ==
* Flying Motor Bikes from ''[[
* Professor McClaine's flying car in ''[[Joe 90]]'' has about the most uncool design a flying vehicle ever had.
* ''[[Supercar]]'' from the Gerry Anderson series of the same name.
* One of the first things Billy did in ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'' once he started getting savvy with alien technology was make a flying Volkswagen Beetle he dubbed the "Rad Bug". Yes, they could, technically, teleport if they wanted to, but even [[Nerd|Billy]] could tell that a flying car was cooler. And it did come in handy the times they ''couldn't'' teleport.
** ''[[Gekisou Sentai Carranger]]'' / ''[[Power Rangers Turbo]]'' has two sentient cars, one of which could convert to a flight mode.
** Also, Speedor of ''[[Engine Sentai Go-onger]]'' / the Eagle Racer of ''[[
** ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]'' frequently showed a small number of flying vehicles to remind us that we're [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]. Oddly, the ''Ranger's'' vehicles were all either ground-bound or full-blown aircraft.
* ''[[
* The third Doctor in ''[[
** More recently, the new series has "New Earth", which features flying cars. In its second appearance, the cars have the worst traffic jam in the history of the universe in "Gridlock".
== Music ==
* In [[
== Newspaper Comics ==
* ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'': In one Sunday comic, Calvin daydreams that his parents let him drive the family car. He then makes the car fly simply by driving so fast that the speedometer breaks.
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Shadowrun]]'' has a selection of hovercars in addition to normal cars, helicopters, and airplanes. The really fun thing is that if you have a reasonable DM, it is possible to afford a hovercar at character creation (it will eat up around half your cash, though)
* ''[[Teenagers From Outer Space]]'' has spacesters: look like a car, move like a flying saucer. No teenager can afford to buy
* ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' has "skimmers" - not quite free-flying antigrav vehicles. In the Imperium they are expensive and rarely seen outside Mechanicus and the elites of Hive Worlds. Armored ones are used as light attack craft. They are more common among the Tau and Eldar (Craftworld and Dark, anyway).
== Video Games ==
* Dribble and Spitz's taxi in the ''[[
* ''[[Beam Breakers]]'' was a computer game in which you drove antigravity cars in a [[Fifth Element]]-esque city. It was also awesome...
* The Pheonix Hovercar in ''[[X-COM]]: Apocalypse''. Together with the [[Cool Bike|Hoverbikes]], they're excellent vehicles for [[Zerg Rush
* Some of the ''[[Choro Q]]'' games have [[Jet Pack|jet packs]] and wings as add-ons which allow your car to fly.
* Common in ''[[Mass Effect]]'', due to the ubiquity of Element Zero-based technology. In the "Lair of the Shadow Broker" DLC for ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'', you even get to pilot one in a scene reminiscent of ''[[Attack of the Clones]]''.
* ''[[Space Taxi]]''.
* ''[[Professor Layton and
{{quote|
'''Layton''': "Plane? This is an automobile." }}
* A common power-up for your tank in the ''[[
* [[Tex Murphy]] has one in ''Mean Streets''. It is not clear what happened to it in the subsequent games.
* ''[[
* The upcoming game [[Mario Kart|''Mario Kart 7'']] will feature cars that can turn into hang gliders.
* Hover cars seem to the norm in [[Future Cop LAPD]], even if they still use roads.
* The ''[[Rogue Squadron]]'' games have a cheat-only flying Buick Electra convertible as an [[Easter Egg]].
== Web Original ==
* [[Deconstructed Trope]] by [[Cracked
{{quote|
* ''[[Fenspace]]'' has flying cars that are spaceworthy. They still need fuel, though they don't seem to need oxidizers for the fuel.
* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' has [[Artificial Gravity]] developed to the point that flying cars are common (and flight ''belts'', but those are less common). Of course, those are powered by annihilation plants (which is a ball of superstrong alloy loaded with neutronium and antimatter, that is distressingly close to armor piercing low-yield nuclear shell) and some of the implications are that on anything that easily counts as a shuttle "manual operation under influence" is commonly a capital offence - of course, it requires tampering with the hardware to remove overrides, and customer vehicles may not even ''have'' manual controls to begin with - [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-09-30 their autopilots are pretty good at avoiding damage].
== Western Animation ==
* About half of the cars in ''[[Batman Beyond]]'', including the Batmobile, can fly. There are still roads though, covered with wheeled vehicles.
* The Falconcar on ''[[Dynomutt Dog Wonder]]''.
* British cartoon hero ''[[Danger Mouse]]'' had what looked suspiciously like a flight-capable version of [[James Bond]]'s [[Shout
* Heroes aren't the only ones to get the sweet rides: [[Inspector Gadget|Dr Claw]] had his getaway car which could function as both a jet and a submarine.
* In ''[[Futurama]]'' all cars are flying cars. Nobody even knows what wheels are. And yet they still [[Crapsack World|crawl along in traffic jams]].
** Like most ''[[Futurama]]'' gags, they only "don't know what wheels are" for the one episode where it's funny.
* At least one in ''[[
* The ATV series of ''[[Rupert Bear]]'' featured a cart named "The Chariot", which was capable of flight. The CGI series featured a more modern looking flying car.
* [[The Jetsons|The Jetsons']] jet-car, probably one of most-cited examples of a flying car as far as the general public's concerned.
* Common in the future presented in ''[[Meet the Robinsons]]''. The Time Machine is even engineered from one a la ''[[Back to The Future]]''.
* Flint Lockwood made an attempt of building one without wings in ''[[Cloudy
* Tracks' alternate mode in ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' was a Corvette Stingray with pop-out wings
** In ''[[Transformers Cybertron]]'', Optimus' vehicle mode has a flight configuration. The side panels swing out and then rotate down to become large wings, and the ladder/cannon on either one swings around so that it still faces forward. His vehicle mode? A fire truck. That's right, he turns into a ''[[Crazy Awesome|flying fire truck]]''.
* Bob's car in ''[[
* Due to being tricked out by her twin super genius brothers, [[Kim Possible]]'s car has this capability.
* Goldie of ''[[Goldie Gold and Action Jack]]'' has a flying limo.
== Real Life ==
* As pointed out at the top of the page, flying cars ''have'' been invented in [[Real Life]]. The idea has just never managed to get off the ground [pun intended] because the flying cars used up ''way'' too much fuel while airborne. Also, they had a nasty tendency to crash when they ran out (which happened ''much'' more quickly than one might think.) Add expense, complexity of operation, and the relative practicality of an automobile as transportation... and you see the problem.
** The critical problem with 'flying cars' is that they are ''aircraft''. As such you can't fly one without a pilot's license, and air traffic control would go insane trying to sort out millions of aircraft flying around each other in a small area. Most existing 'flying cars' are better described as roadable aircraft. Most small airfields are in rural areas, so you have the minor problem of arriving at an airfield and having no transport to the nearest town, except for a taxi or folding bicycle. The idea is that you could detach the wings and propeller, then drive the remaining vehicle by road into town. They are not really designed as a replacement for your normal car.
*** Not to mention that traffic collisions are bad enough with how cars are now. Imagine how much worse they'd get if you factored in the fact that the car's going to be falling from
* ''[[Top Gear]]''{{'}}s James May made a [https://web.archive.org/web/20110826092709/http://www.open2.net/jamesmay/come_fly_with_me.html documentary on the subject], concluding that despite the safety concerns the main problem with flying cars would be the paperwork.
* [[Vaporware]] example: the [http://www.moller.com/ Moller Skycar].
** The Moller website does have some lovely quotes, though:
{{quote|
** Several others have been tried.
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20040816075959/http://www.fordpinto.com/mitzar1.htm There was even a flying] [[Every Car Is a Pinto|Pinto]].
** Of course making it fly safely is only the first step, you then have to get FAA approval and find backing. the [
* The closest Real Life equivalent to the flying car of science fiction is the helicopter. Unfortunately, they're expensive, hard to fly, and make much more noise than you would want to live next to, which is why the average person doesn't own one.
** The good news is that we now have computers that can make helicopters significantly easier to fly. Of course that doesn't help the noise, and actually makes them
** Actually, if one doesn't mind a little less fuel efficiency there's always tip-jet powered helicopters, whose rotor blades are not powered by a central shaft, but instead a jet at the tips. The Nazis tried it using ramjets at the end, but it's less complicated and safer to use compressed air pumped through the rotor assembly by a compressor inside the body. Not only is this system quieter, but the lack of a torqued shaft removes the need for a tail rotor and dramatically decreases the slow response time of control inputs, making it much easier to fly than traditional helicopters.
** Small airplanes, such as those made by Cessna, are also pretty close to the science fiction conception of flying <s>airplanes</s> cars in everything but ease of control and appearance. Also, they are very expensive.
*** A used, very basic Cessna might cost about the same as a (new, good, but not luxury-level) automobile. Learning to fly it and getting a license to do so is probably a bigger difficulty, and many would be averse to the risk to begin with. Then there's additional maintenance costs and complications. And a small plane simply isn't as ''practical'' as an automobile for transportation, which is probably the ''biggest'' reason why it can't be treated as an equivalent. [[Captain Obvious|You can't exactly take a Cessna on a grocery shopping trip]], and even for, say, visiting out-of-town relatives, you'll need some way to get from the airstrip to their front door. Of course, part of the reason cars ''are'' so comparatively practical is that we have an entire infrastructure designed around them... But it's hard to imagine doing the same for conventional airplanes.
* The [http://www.parajetautomotive.com/ ParaJet SkyCar] is an unusually simple example. It looks like a dune buggy with a parawing and a propeller strapped to the back. Largely because that's exactly what it is. But it works! As a bonus, if the engine fails or runs out of fuel, the buggy will simply glide to the ground with its "wing" acting as a parachute, rather than suffer a deadly crash. Judging from the design, the main purpose will be fun and recreation. Shipping is expected to start this year (2010) -- it remains to be seen whether this will turn out to be [[Vaporware]] or not.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110722073132/http://www.urbanaero.com/Urban_Main.htm Urban Aeronautics'] proposed VTOL aircraft certainly ''looks'' like a large flying car, though flying cars is not what the company intends to create (they want to build aircraft useful for rescue operations, and other non-personal uses). However, the goal is to build a compact, safe, quiet, relatively easy-to-control aircraft that is capable of operating in an urban environment, including safely manoeuvring between buildings while dealing with turbulence, and is capable of remaining airborne while in contact with a physical object (like, say, the side of a building). It certainly sounds like the company may inadvertently take a big step towards creating working flying cars if they succeed. Currently they have a scale prototype undergoing extensive flight testing.
* ''Boeing'' sunk six million dollars into something called the "Sky Commuter" program in the 1980s. [http://boingboing.net/2008/01/12/sky-commuter-vehicle.html This prototype], which was apparently sold on Ebay in 2008, is all that remains. It looks beautiful, and very much like a proper science fiction flying car, but it seems it did not fly particularly well.
* [http://www.terrafugia.com/ This lot] look like they might be close to actually selling [[Transformers|transforming]] flying cars commercially. Hope you have $200,000 on you, though.
** This highlights an interesting, if subtle, distinction between "flying cars" and "road-able aircraft", which is a term you'll often read if studying this topic. The Terrafugia "''Transition''" is an ''airplane'' that happens to have compact, folding wings and the ability to drive on regular roads. You still need to take off and land at an airport, and fly the vehicle like any small
* While other flying car designs are more like "airplanes you can drive on the road", [https://web.archive.org/web/20131107024540/http://www.eaavideo.org/video.aspx?v=635469588001 this I-TEC design] is more like "a car that can also fly". It only gets 40 MPH in the air, but it's pretty speedy on the road (see around 2:50 in the video), and the company seems to have serious plans for what they want to do with it.
* The [
* Volkswagen's China branch appears to have come up with [http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/05/09/volkswagen_s_people_s_car_project_creates_hover_vehicle_concept_video_.html a floating car]. This particular concept car relies on magnetic levitation instead of conventional engines, meaning it'll require a lot of specialized infrastructure to be drivable.
* Hovecrafts, technically. Well, they don't actually touch the ground when in motion. It happens that their flight ceiling is about an inch.
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[[Category:Travel Cool]]
[[Category:Flying Tropes]]
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