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Flying Car: Difference between revisions
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** Several others have been tried.
** [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 *more* expensive... so...
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** 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 plane -- but you can ''drive it home'' from the airstrip after you land, too, as if it were a car. (You can also drive ''instead'' of flying if weather conditions are bad). Not quite as glamorous as a full flying car might be -- [[Boring but Practical|but in the end, far more practical.]]
* While other flying car designs are more like "airplanes you can drive on the road", [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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