Geneva Motor Show: World's First Production Ready Flying Car

I'm still waiting for one of these to appear on Autotrader...:laugh::)

Still see the odd non-flying variety but that's just so 1985...

flying_delorean_by_p_lion-d4hxf6x.jpg
 
I am glad there are inventors and engineers who can imagine and bring to life such wonderful contraptions, but I agree with others who have posited that this is an answer in search of a question. These devices tend to redistribute wealth as the wealthy pilot/adventurer has a bigger class of people who can afford it than those who can pull it off.
 
So I had a closer look at the model, and it is in fact a gyroplane.
But looking at the sales-pitch and the specs, it just gets weirder and weirder.
"No queues at airports, and no hassle of finding a parking-space."
Right. Except now you have to first buy this over-priced monstrosity, then get a pilots license, and then pay the landing fee at whatever airport you use. (And those are not cheap)
Flying range is 400km (500km if one person flying eco) at about 140km/h which is....well, nothing.
Even better, it has a minimum take-off distance at full load of 330m, and a rotor-span of 30-odd meters.
Which means you'll have to find a 40x330m area that is reasonably flat, reasonably solid, and completely free of obstacles.
And you can't just take-off from the road unless you want to lose your PPL. The FAA tends to frown upon low flying over congested areas.

The more I read about it, the less impressed I get tbh.
It's a neat concept, and one hell of an engineering feat, but there are zero practical applications for it.
 
I have been looking into quantum electro dynamics for awhile now we are a long way from anti- gravity. Some guys like John Hutchison's effect are getting some interesting results but nothing repeatable in a practical application.
Gravity seems to be a displacement of space. But even this is not right when observing a floating object inside the space shuttle which should slowly migrate to the center mass of the shuttle. Maybe it does happen if given enough time?
 
The funny thing is that everyone is actually talking about the viability of a vehicle like this, and all I can think of is that they chose the worst possible place for that parking brake...
 
I'm thinking only robber's using these. Think about Officer reporting for chief how they lost them while in chase. Chief. - Better be a goddamn good explanation for how the hell you lost these criminal's while in chase just behind them? Or you are out of job for good! - Well... Doh. I think i go packing my thing's.
 
LoL literally no one cares about flying cars just like no one cared about electric until Tesla made the Model S look like a better and/or similar Aston Martin Rapide.

Car's not viable, now or in the near future, looks like ass etc.

Can we talk about cars that are actually awesome, 488 Pista, Senna GTR (dafuk win levels off the chart), Rimac Automobili owning hard (not reallly a fan but still), and literally anything else than this caricature they call a (flying) car.

PS. if you think Im hating, youre right :D
 
Well yea, but it still needs a runoff and landing strip, it still needs a pre-flight check (especially with so many moving parts folding the heliparts). Great on paper, looks cool, but the gap between on the ground and flying is still huge. This is more of a plane you can drive on roads than a flying car. But always nice to see people coming up with new solutions to and age old problem.
 
Think of future traffic will be 10 times worse even with double the lanes

Driverless Flying Cars won't need to build huge highways, air is free
Most of the land used for huge overpasses could then be reclaimed
 
Think of future traffic will be 10 times worse even with double the lanes

Driverless Flying Cars won't need to build huge highways, air is free
Most of the land used for huge overpasses could then be reclaimed
Yeeeesss.....
Small problem there. We need an AI that is efficient enough and safe enough to do so.
We're talking a fully-functional, completely automatic system that can navigate in three dimensions, in a seamless grid. It's not like just plugging in a GPS and say that's that.
It has to be completely self-enclosed so the users can't interfere with it (otherwise 9/11 will look like a 4th of July show), it has to be completely hacker-proof (same reason), and yet it has to be software-updateable for the entire lifespan of the car.
Guess what, we don't have a clue how to do that.
Most PCs/consoles/smartphones have an average life-expectancy somewhere between 2-5 years, after which people will exchange them with new models. So any glitches (of which there are usually bucketfuls) can be fixed in the next model, and the next iteration of the OS.
Can't do that with something that has a life-span of 20-30 years.
It's already a huge problem just keeping something like hospital-machinery operating, simply because they were built with e.g. WinXP. Trying to fix the exploits and also keeping the machinery capable of talking to all the other systems that have since been upgraded, without spending millions of pounds on new hardware is what can only be described as a major headache.
One they still haven't solved, and this is fixed equipment we're talking about here.

Not to mention that air most certainly isn't free. There are massive problems already trying to cram the current air-traffic into place. The airspace over London is running at about 98% ATC capacity.
Even assuming that flying cars would stay below 1,000ft (which seems reasonable), you'd still need an infrastructure capable of handling massive amounts of traffic, which again would have to be automated.
 
I see enough drivers struggling to control a car in two dimensions of movement. Imagine adding a third...

Totaly true, add in also Drugs, Booze, =fireballs, smashed in heads, body parts, from mid-air collisions falling from the sky, not to mention the wreckage too. Best to get a helmet now just for sitting outside. LOL :)
 

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