Today I came across a video of what seemed to be a normal car driving down the road when all of a sudden this car transformed into a flying aircraft. Are we in the future or what?
This "flying car" I saw a video of is being created by the company Terrafugia, and it is called the TF-X: a car that can drive like normal on roads, that can also transform into a helicopter-like aircraft. I did some research on this new technology and found that this is not the only "flying car" type model that is being created.
Terrafugia is also creating an aircraft-within-a-car called "The Transition." On Terrafugia's site, they describe The Transition being "the world’s first practical flying car." To my disbelief, I read on to find out that Terrafugia has come out with a few prototypes of this model and that they are accepting preorders for when it arrives on the market in the US. Terrafugia claims that they aim to see this car being delivered within the next three years.
Hearing about these technological advances threw me for a loop because apparently, Terrafugia has been working on developing this flying car since 2009. At first, I thought it was the most amazing idea and couldn't wait to see what life might be like with a flying car. But then I realized many of the impracticalities of a car that can fly. First of all, if the car is quite unlike a helicopter, which The Transition is, there will need to be a runway in order to take off into full flight. If someone was driving around in their flying car and then wanted to fly, they would have to make their way to a runway, which seems a bit impractical to me. Second, I thought about air traffic. If everyone is one day going to be flying around in cars rather than driving on the roads, won't there need to be air traffic rules? On the roads, we have stop signs, stop lights, and lanes so that we know how to drive safely. If everyone is going to be up in the air, how will we know to drive, or fly, safely, if not trained to do so? Third, I can't even imagine the cost of these vehicles/aircrafts. On the Terrafugia site, the down payment for The Transition is $10,000, but that is a payment someone would be paying before they had even seen the vehicle in person. I'm not sure I even want to know what the full final cost of The Transition will be when or if ever they are released to be sold.
Those are just my initial thoughts on a flying car, but who knows - they might be revolutionary. Here is the link to the video I saw about the TF-X flying car today that truly blew my mind. I'll let you create your own opinions about this car... or should I say aircraft?
