We already have amphibious cars that can take us over land and sea and jet packs that allow us to take off like a spaceman. Now some of the world’s leading engineers are trying to advance the technology of travel further by developing cars that can fly. The new vehicles are seen as becoming necessary, with motorways growing more clogged, and commuters prepared to travel further. California-based company Moller International has built a prototype of its Skycar . The streamlined vehicle - think sports car meets the hovercraft Luke Skywalker drove in Star Wars - is designed to make vertical take-offs, fly around 700 miles and drive short distances. Jack Allison, who retired as a vice-president at Moller but still works there, said Skycars were expected to start at about $1 million and require pilot’s training. It’s not clear when they’ll be available, but Mr Allison says more than 100 people have put down a $5,000 deposit. Major corporations are trying to take the concept on to the mass maket. Boeing is already thinking far ahead. The company has created a miniature model of a sporty red helicopter/car hybrid that is helping the aerospace giant to understand what it would take to make flying cars. Lynne Wenberg, the senior manager on the project, said the goal was to make a flying car that cost the same as a luxury vehicle, was quiet and fuel-efficient and easy to fly and maintain.

Boeing is especially interested in the broader problem of figuring out how to police the airways if thousands of flying cars enter the skies. No-one wants to be cut off, tail-gated or buzzed by a student driver at 1,000 feet. "The neat, gee-whizz part [is] thinking about what would the vehicle itself look like, but we’re trying to think through all the ramifications of what it would take to deploy a fleet of these," said Dick Paul, a vice-president with Boeing’s research arm. Dutch researchers believe they are less than two years away from developing a machine which will be at home on the roads and in the air, while satisfying the legal requirements of both.

View: Full Article | Source: Scotsman

All i can say is.....The future is now

but thats sooo awsome!
two years! only two! whoa

I doubt it since a pilots license is required.....it is nothing more than a glorified piper cub! Wake me when they come out with something like George Jetson drives around in!

Not to impressive to me! looks like a plane, flies like a plane it'a a plane!

Great, something else for us pedestrians to worry about. LOL

I'm not impressed really. So it's a small jet plane with wheels. You think those things are gonna be allowed on the roads? It'll be used only for flying. Where is it gonna be stored, in someones garage? Only the richest of the rich will be able to have one, and it looks like only one person can fit so it'll be pretty much recreational only.

Yea, I partially agree. And thats probably why they are called PAV's (Personal Air Vehicle). I saw a show on the discovery channel that showed these PAV's. They air not ment to be some kind of futuristic hovering car. It is ment to be a vehicle that flies and can fit one person (and some fit a 4 or so person family), so that traffic isn't as big a problem anymore. But, basically, it is a mini plane, and is very expensive. And the majority of the people you see in traffic is from the middle class. Last time I checked, Middle class wasn't considered to be the type of person to afford a million dollar vehicle. So that would take rich people off the road, and middle class still on the road. It's not efficient enough for its cause.

Now, what is the future? Well, most of you have heard of the train called the bullet (the train that works on magnetic tracks. I believe that in the future, cars will run on magnetic roadways, meaning they will hover a certain amount of space in the air over the road. It is kind of like the cars in the movie Minority Report (2002) Infact, alot (not all) of the things you see in that movie is quite feasible. Like the shockguns, and such.

Yeah maybe they are designed for the rich..Maybe they are more plane then car..A lot of you have made some great points, but the fact still remains that techology has gone far and this is a sign. When I was a little kid I waited for the time to come when cars can fly. Well that time has come, the future is upon us. Now that flying cars are bein made I will wait for the time when they create human cities on other planets.

this one looked ok . Too expensive to be efficient ...

wait a second.....when did this happen?

someone said, and i agree with them, that the Skycar will probably replace the helicopter.

Not very practical for a car

Back in the 50s, there were several versions of the hovercar. They proved impractical for a variety of reasons (but mostly because they float on a cushion of compressed air and that was impractical for anything or anyone that came near the vehicle while it was in operation as they kicked up a lot of debris just for starters).

As for saving on the wear and tear of existing roadways and making good use of the current infrastructure, the maintenance and repair of modern roadways is a constant task. It is not just wheeled vehicular traffic that contributes to degradation of asphalt and concrete. Wind and rain erosion, as well as seismic disturbances including ground movement from fractures in subsurface rocks contribute to deterioration. Heat in summer and cold in winter causes roadway surfaces to expand and contract which will eventually lead to cracking and breakdown of the pavement.

Highway maintenance is an ongoing job. My father was a highway engineer and did this all his working life. As he told me many times, if it were not for the highway department, it would only be a few years before most roads would be in such poor repair they would not be safe to drive on.

I've been reading about Moller's skycar in detail for a number of years now. One thing that impresses me about it is the extraordinarily redundant safety features that are build into this vehicle. Because it is computer controlled and operates by GPS and other sensor devices onboard, it is much more than just a flying car or a small aircraft. It is far more sophisticated, safe and different from any preceding vehicle on land or in the air.

The FAA has already mapped out invisible roadways in the sky. These are 3-dimensional. That in itself indicates a greater volume of space for traffic than a mere 2-dimensional roadway on the ground. It will be many decades before there are enough skycars flying through the sky to even be that noticable to people on the ground. Because the skycar is computer controlled, a full pilot's license would not be required. This is something Moller has already worked out with the FAA.

As for cost, nearly every technological advance we humans make is initially expensive. When automobiles were first introduced in the 1890s only the wealthy could afford them. It was not until Henry Ford introduced the concept of assembly line factories that the Model A car was mass produced in sufficient quantities to make the per car price affordable to more people. Even with that, as any good businessperson knows, it is costly to produce the first 1,000 widgets so you have to sell them for more to just break even or make a small profit to make more. As more people buy the items, the company can make more widgets. Eventually, it is able to produce millions of widgets for a fraction of the cost of what the first 1,000 cost. Then the price drops. This happened with color televisions, VCRs, video camcorders, plasma and LCD televisions, personal computers, microwaves and even blenders. Blenders first appeared in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was during the great depression and most people could not afford a great many things. No one but the wealthy could afford such an extravagance as a household kitchen blender. Today they are so cheap nearly every house has one. Oh, and let's not forget CRT monitors. Not so very many years ago anything over 15" was $700-$800 or more. Now they are practically giving away 21" monitors (that I could not justifiably afford) because LCDs have become so cheap and are better technology. So, what will happen to all the gasoline engine, rubber tired cars? I expect they'll be around for a while and then will evolve into a different kind of ground transportation for short distance travel.

The skycar will be no different. If you are in your teens now, you will probably have a skycar after you finish college and get that big promotion in your third or fourth job when you are in your 30s and skycars are in the $50,000 or so range. If you are over forty, you probably will not be buying a skycar unless you invested wisely from early on in your career and are a person that just has to have the latest new toy since you'll be in your fifties or early sixties before they really begin to catch on.

Probably by the time the population reaches 12 billion or more and the skycars make the atmosphere look like something out of the Jetsons, someone will have figured out that transporter technology is feasible. (I read recently that some scientist says it is theoretically possible and "transported" a photon or something to that effect.) Then, like on Star Trek, someone will be saying it is unsafe and scrambles your atoms or that we'll end up with criss crossed matter streams of mutant people whose atoms have been scrambled together like Tuvix in the Star Trek Voyager episode where Tuvok and Neelix were merged into one person.

This is when it is good to remember that when automobiles were invented some people thought that human begins could not travel faster than a horse because is was unnatural and against the order of God's universe. Going so fast would surely make the wind pass so quickly over the human body that it would be impossible to breath and people would suffocate. (I did not make this up!) My great grand aunt who was born in 1883 once told me when she was a young girl hardly anyone had a telephone and most people believed that it would never catch on as it was just so impersonal to not see someone when you were talking to them. Besides, a good part of communication is the expression on people's face. Some people even thought having the receiver so close to one's ear too much of the time could potentially damage one's hearing. (I find that one particularly humorous since Bell was trying to invent a way for deaf people to hear when he "accidentally" invented the telephone.)

i think i'll stick to the ground. cars are dangerous enough as it is. but at least you have the chance of surviving a wreck when on the ground... i mean, if you get hit way up in the air, you're going to die in the fall no matter what.

Good post Grivantian! and welcome to U-M Forum

design and cost will will get much better because of new lighter and stronger materials that will be in mass prdouction shortly. Sophisticated computers will also be one of the main reasons why skycars will be safer in the future. Computers will make it so much safer and easier to control.

Do you think that they'll actually have flying cars available for the public?
Just think of all the new windows of opportunity for criminals.
For one, the average Joe Blow will never be able to afford one for a looooong time before the costs are low enough for even a medium income family to afford.
Second, the rich and the corrupt will be the ones who can afford it.
Just think of some place or facility that you can't enter because there are gates that stop ground vehicles. Will flying cars you'll be able to sneak around anywhere.
If I had one I'd definitely be going to forbidden places, why wouldn't you?
People already have a hard enough time driving on the roads anyway, and we know that alot of people are driving impaired. Quite frankly I wouldn't want some drunken retard crashing into my 50th storey high rise condo.
*shrugs*

you really think, the rich or corupt, would waste their time, snooping in windows in a $500K aircar?

and no-fly zones would likely be implemented... IMO

That looks like a small private plane than a car

in my opnion.......this is a stupid idea.

it will cause nothing but more fuel demands. and even worse wrecks.

No, we will become more efficient! It is not a stupid idea.

It's about damned time.