Posted on 08/29/2020 12:31:05 PM PDT by Libloather
TOKYO (AP) - The decades-old dream of zipping around in the sky as simply as driving on highways may be becoming less illusory.
Japan’s SkyDrive Inc., among the myriads of “flying car” projects around the world, has carried out a successful though modest test flight with one person aboard.
In a video shown to reporters on Friday, a contraption that looked like a slick motorcycle with propellers lifted several feet (1-2 meters) off the ground, and hovered in a netted area for four minutes.
Tomohiro Fukuzawa, who heads the SkyDrive effort, said he hopes “the flying car” can be made into a real-life product by 2023, but he acknowledged that making it safe was critical.
“Of the world’s more than 100 flying car projects, only a handful has succeeded with a person on board,” he told The Associated Press.
“I hope many people will want to ride it and feel safe.”
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Can it glide or autorotate? Or does it drop like a brick when one of its props fails?
I always wanted one.
Marty McFly and Dr. Brown said we would have flying cars years ago.
I’d rather fly in that go-cart drone thing this guy built. (Youtube)
I don’t know why a cheap, inexpensive small aircraft was not developed and mass produced years ago. If I could afford it, I’d buy one.
When I look what they did to GA or general aviation in the past 50+ years, it’s disgusting. One has to be wealthy to even store, insure, buy a small aircraft today. Even a small Cessna is way beyond affordable for most Americans. That flat out sucks in my opinion.
Meet George Jetson.
We have been getting promises of a “flying car” since perhaps the early postwar years after WW II, and any number of “convertible” car-plane hybrids were demonstrated, but almost every one of them were of such cumbersome difficulty of storage and the actual “conversion” that they never made it to production.
We shall just have to wait for a reliable “anti-gravity” unit to come along to make the concept practical.
Right up there with fusion power.
But they missed the Cubbies WS win by a year. Ergo, a fraud.
A “flying car” is an airplane.
They're mini planes.
The problems previous incarnations of the ‘flying car’ was that the combo didn’t do either one particularly well. I.E. Crappy.
The same problem to the boat-car combo.
Looks like a big drone to me, not a car. Where are the tires?
That shouldn’t wake up the neighbors at 4am. Needs a muffler.
Don’t need a car/aircraft combo...Like the video above depicts, you could take off in this thing in your backyard, and land it just about anywhere upon reaching your destination. No need for a car combo.
Yeah. .. But where is the beer holder?
New meaning to the mile high club for sure.
I’m so ready for this. Been ready since early childhood. I would live anywhere I had to, in order to fly one legally.
Unlike in places like LA where illegals fire up 275,000 leaf blowers every morning.
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