The world's first commercially available flying car is now street legal in Europe. Yes, I said flying car.

submitted by christnmusicreleases from (notthebee.com)

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[–]FediNetizen 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

It's less of a "flying car" and more of a roadable aircraft.

[–]Akali 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I still want one! But with such a price, I'll have to pass...

[–]Zapped 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

Another step in the right direction, even if it doesn't directly lead to what's ahead.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Like in the opening of the Vid, the flying car has been an obsession for 80 years and the concept itself is flawed. If it was practical the military would have them by now. Imagine leaving at 5AM, you drive up the highway, it's quiet on the roads when you take off. When you come back from your picnic at 3PM the roads are chock full of cars. Where do you land? Light planes are as dangerous as fuck and they are designed solely to fly. This thing is a death trap.

[–]FediNetizen 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

They mentioned it in the video I believe, but a gyro has the benefit of a slow landing, which drastically shortens runway needs, makes botched landings less dangerous, and gives you much more flexibility with picking a site in the event of a forced landing. I could see a niche for this in something like LA, where traffic is horrendous. If you had a few STOL fields littered about you could get around the city way faster.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It it was made by Boeing I might have a little more faith in it, but lets be realistic, we see these wild flying concept cars come and go every 5 to ten years, there is a lot of media hype but never a mass uptake. https://www.motor1.com/news/230269/skyrunner-flying-car-crashes-building/

[–]Drewski 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Pretty cool, but I'd wait until they have hovercraft style cars like in Blade Runner.

[–]turn_coat 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Maintenance is going to be a clusterfuck on something like that. I would say we'd need at least 3rd gen before it's actually worth looking into, even for the super wealthy that can afford to casually throw around half a million dollars.

[–]christnmusicreleases[S] 1 insightful - 3 fun1 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

300,000.

[–]FediNetizen 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

399k. I've heard of rounding down the dollar but this rounding is next-level.

[–]PresentableSonInLaw 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Cool tech, highly impractical.

[–]FediNetizen 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Imagine if you could use one of these to navigate a city like LA. Skip the nightmarish traffic.

Granted, the limited speed of gyros means this would be impractical for regional stuff. Speaking of which, there is another flying car design coming down the pipeline that uses a more standard fixed wing setup, so much higher cruising speeds and you could actually go places with it. It's called the Samson Switchblade

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That's an old American design that got scrapped as being impractical.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Street legal? What about air legal...

They're still working on aviation certification in Europe, but they expect it to be finalized by 2022

In other words, invest now and lose all your money when the EASA knocks it back or insist the driver has a full pilot's license. As for the safety of the monstrosity, well the Ginger Geek in the video just fills me confidence, NOT.

[–]MarkJefferson 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

So this is an autogyro, which is kinda like a propeller plane but generates lift not from it's wings, but unpowered rotors. Haven't heard of these before now. It doesn't sound like they can hover while stationary or at least having a strong wind blowing from the front. Accident rate from autogyros also seem pretty high.