Who wouldn’t want a flying car – apart from those who don’t like flying…or driving…or both? For the rest of us who do want one, and can afford it of course, flying cars could be on the market in as little as two years. A US company called Terrafugia is currently testing a prototype called the Transition. However, as its name implies, this flying car is more of a stepping-stone to a more impressive vehicle called the TF-X, which they plan to put into production in ten years’ time.
The TF-X concept: While the Transition can be driven on public roads, you still need to go to an airport to take off, which detracts from the allure of a flying car somewhat. With the TF-X, while you won’t be able to simply take off from the road –say, if you get stuck in a traffic jam- all you need is 100ft of open space.
Dr. Carl Dietrich, Terrafugia’s CEO, explains to Humans Invent how this flying car will work. He says, “The TF-X concept is a vertical take off and landing, plug-in electric flying car. It carries four people, it uses electric propulsion for vertical take off and vertical landing and there are two motor pods out on the ends of the wings.” He continues, “When you want to lift off you have to find about a 100ft diameter open space that is relatively level. In the United States, if it’s private property, you need the permission of the landowner, to take off and land, otherwise there are public heliports and the vehicle would also be able to take off and land at normal airports of which there are over 5,000 in the US.”
ADSB: So in essence, the car will take off like a helicopter and then fly like a plane. But won’t it be a little dangerous having lots of these little planes taking off and flying around willy-nilly? According to Dietrich, technology will be in place by the time the TF-X is launched that will resolve this issue.
He says, “One of the key enabling pieces of infrastructure technology is the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) next gen air traffic control system which includes a data network that’s called ADSB, which stands for automatic dependence surveillance broadcast. Basically this is an airborne data network that broadcasts the GPS position and the velocity of every aircraft in the national airspace system.
“This means that every aircraft will know where every aircraft is with perfect information, which will be much better than the ground based radars of today. This system is already deployed in most of Europe and in about ¾ of the US today; it will be fully deployed in all aircraft in the US national airspace system by 2020.”
Operator’s permit: Interestingly, it might not be necessary to have a full pilot’s licence to be able to fly the TF-X. Dietrich says, “We believe with a vehicle like this, that is significantly fly-by-wire and has the onboard ability to effectively navigate and avoid other air traffic, that an operator would need less training than a typical general aviation pilot needs today to safely operate an aircraft. “We are in talks with the FAA about the creation of something that we have referred to as an operator’s permit, which would be vehicle specific because we believe that a normal driver could be trained to safely operate a vehicle like this in as little as five hours.”
He continues, “We have no assurance from the FAA that they will do that at this time but we believe that as we move forward and begin to demonstrate this technology and how simple it could be to interact with a vehicle of this type, that once we do prove the concept, then it may be possible to create an operator’s licence like that.” While they are not willing to put a price tag on the TF-X just yet, the Transition will cost $279,000, which is clearly a lot of money but not an outrageous amount when you consider how much you could spend on a sports car that, despite its speed, will never leave the ground.
