After what happened in China when motorcycles were legalized, I think I’d want to wait a while before going anywhere that flying cars were being ised.
I did some numbers on this one time and to get a 3000 lb vehicle airborne in VTOL requires about 1000-1500 HP and 2000 HP to really be safe. 2000 HP is about the point where you get a 2:1 TWR and get more drone like behavior including fast stops and redundancy. It also takes a ton of fuel to power 2000 HP worth of engine(s), so realistically this 3000 lb 1400 KG car would need wings or something to get good fuel economy.
In order to power these beasts, especially within the weight requires turbine engines which are expensive. Somewhere around 100k on the lower end. Two 1200 HP jet turbines would be good but would probably cost around 150-200k in America anyways. 2000 HP is also going to use close to a gallon per minute of fuel. So take offs and landings outside of runways would be a bit costly.
You would also need autopilot features in controlled airspace or people would be crashing into buildings and stuff within cities.
It’s a cool idea but there are many practical reasons why flying cars won’t really work rn. The technology exists but it’s expensive and hard to maintain and dangerous and also can be very loud.
Link is messed up for me. Are these things really that heavy? I’d assume that they’re really just upsized drone things.
Yeah, that’s what’s shown in the video, basically a large six propeller drone. The big issues seem to be safety, flight time (battery lasts 20-30 minutes), and air space regulation.
Personally, I don’t think drones are there yet and may never be. The range is probably always going to be limited due to energy density and at that point mass transit (like trains) will always be the better/safer option. Even if you can solve the energy issue I think you still run into safety issues including high wind scenarios.
Can’t wait to listen to a constant buzz of thousands of these in the air at all times.
So that’s where my flying car is.
I had a dream after I watched that episode where I was in jake’s place. It’d be so sick to have sisko was taking you on a voyage.
