Flying cars: What has happened to them?

Kids like Disney’s Thora Martins Iwaju. Instead of driving to school, they fly. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley did the same thing when they missed the train to Hogwarts, as did Flint Lockwood when he had to stop a giant spaghetti storm. Cloudy skies, maybe meatballs.

Flying cars have been featured in science fiction and fantasy stories since the early 1900s, but they don’t actually fly in the sky — at least, not yet. And if flying cars do become commonplace one day, they might look a little different from what you see in the movies.

The technology to build flying cars already exists, says Xiaosong Du, an aerospace engineer at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. Hundreds of companies, including Terrafugia, are working on making flying cars a reality, and some, including Joby Aviation’s air taxi and Airbus’ Vahana, have already sent prototypes into the air.

The key to making flying cars a reality is to combine helicopter and airplane technology, Du said. It’s not very practical to make a flying car take off like an airplane; that would require a runway, which takes up a lot of space. Instead, a flying car would take off vertically, like a helicopter. Rotating blades cut through the air, creating a force called lift that lifts the car off the ground.

“Once takeoff is complete, it can fly just like a normal airplane,” Du says. The plane’s wings rotate outward from the fuselage, allowing it to fly with less aerodynamic drag than a helicopter.

Another option would be to attach propellers to the wings of a flying car. At first, the wings would be tilted upward so that the propellers could lift the vehicle. Then, once the car takes off, the wings would be tilted flat like a normal airplane, says Pat Anderson, former director of the Eagle Flight Research Center at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. “It’s like a Transformer,” says Anderson.

The vehicles, with their spinning blades and propellers, look nothing like the flying cars of science fiction — and they don’t even sound like cars. Instead, these vehicles are more like the two-winged helicopters that space soldiers piloted around Pandora. Avatar. It’s a movie, says Anderson.

Yet building flying cars isn’t just about making science fiction a reality. It’s about using more of the world’s available space to get people to their destinations. Today’s drivers can only travel in two dimensions: north-south and east-west. Flying cars have the potential to make three dimensions possible: up and down. Imagine a world where you can avoid rush-hour traffic by simply lifting off the ground and flying over other drivers.

This could be especially useful as the world’s population continues to grow. “I think that eventually we’ll get to a point where we’re using three dimensions to navigate,” Anderson says. “If we don’t, [Earth is] It’s going to be a pretty busy place.”

What’s the delay?

One of the biggest barriers for people commuting in flying cars is cost. Alef Aeronautics, for example, plans to sell personal cars that can drive on the road and take to the skies. These cars look and function similarly to the cars seen in many science fiction movies, but they come at a high price. When production begins as early as next year, the cars will likely cost around $300,000 each.

A wealthy few people might own such a car, Anderson said, but most people can’t afford it. Even the repairs would be much more expensive than for a regular car. “If you get into a collision, you’ve damaged the plane, not the car,” Anderson said.

But the day may come when the general public will ride in flying vehicles, and Anderson believes that a flying car ride-sharing service (like an Uber or Lyft for the skies) may be more realistic than everyone owning a flying car.

Anderson says some companies plan to launch cars sooner, but it’s probably 10 or 20 years away before flying Ubers become commonplace. First, aircraft need to be tested multiple times for safety. And the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration needs to develop regulations for flying cars. Rules of the road aren’t enough; flying cars need rules of the sky. “You don’t want a plane to fall on someone and injure them,” Anderson says.

Du agrees that “reliability and safety are key themes” when it comes to making flying cars a reality.

Powering flying taxis is another hurdle: “People are obsessed with batteries” for sustainability, Anderson said, but they are heavy and, like electric car batteries, have a limited range.

Flight requires a lot of power, especially during takeoff. Current rechargeable lithium-ion batteries give flying cars only 20 to 30 minutes of flight time, Du says. A car that runs out of charge simply parks, but a flying car will fall out of the sky. So it’s especially important that these batteries last a long time, which is why researchers like Du are working to improve battery efficiency before flying taxis hit the market.

After ensuring safety and energy efficiency, the next big step will be to make flying cars self-driving. It’s still a rarity to even see self-driving cars on the ground. But if autonomous vehicles can take off from the ground, kids of the future might be able to skip their pilot test and head straight to the sky.

Source: www.snexplores.org