Attempts to manufacture flying cars began in the 1950s. The first flying car was designed in 1949 by Moulton Taylor – the 1954 Taylor Aerocar N-101D. Only five were made, and in 2011 a Minneapolis man put his up for sale for the price of 1.25 million dollars.
Several companies have succeeded in taking a car to the air. The most recent company to make headway with this concept is Terrafugia. For a fully refundable $10,000 deposit you too can purchase the Transition® aerocar (for under $300,000). It runs on premium fuel from any gas station and takes about a minute to transform from car to plane. Anna Mracek Dietrich, one of the Transition® aerocar’s creators, gave a Ted Talk in which she said that they wanted to make a “plane that can drive,” not a “car that can fly.” It was designed to fit into a standard single-sized garage stall and is technically categorized as an SUV or a truck.
While the concept is intriguing, a flying car does have people questioning its practicality. To make a vehicle that is both street and sky-legal it is necessary to compromise on certain design aspects in order to ensure that it complies with two sets of regulations. Plus you need auto and aviation insurance to operate it. Dietrich reasons that wherever you are in the United States, at any given time, you’re approximately 20-30 miles away from an independent airstrip, making it easy to takeoff when you want to fly and land when you decide to put all four tires back on the ground.
She also argues that the fuel used in this car is more environmentally-friendly than regular aviation fuel, that it’s safer because if there’s bad weather you can simply land and drive, and that you can save on hangar fees by parking the aerocar in your own garage. This is a great step towards the Jetson-like future I envisioned as a child. Will it “take off” though? Perhaps aerocars will increase in popularity the way home computers did – when they were first introduced in the 1970s it took some time for them to catch on and for the cost to go down, but now it’s rare to see a household without one. Or they could become luxury items or collector’s pieces for hobbyists. Only time will tell if this is the commuter vehicle of the future and if my childhood dream of traveling like the Jetsons will become a reality.
To watch Dietrich’s Ted Talk about the Terrafugia Transition® follow this link: http://www.ted.com/talks/anna_mracek_dietrich_a_plane_you_can_drive#t-553944.
To see a video of the original flying car from the 1950s you can go to the Smithsonian website by following this link: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1954-flying-car-for-sale-1281786/, and if you’re interested in purchasing your own flying car you can go to www.terrafugia.com.
-Leah Harrower, JETPUBS Inc.