Flying cars to change the face of future transportation

The concept:

Most of you might have seen some movies like "The Fifth Element," read any books or even heard it from someone about flying cars. So, what is all that which is putting fire to the hot conversation. Most of the techies here would agree with me that these are not anything which could be made by adding the wings to a car. The manufacture of a flying car, or more appropriately said "roadable aircrafts," needs a heavy attention on both of the aspects that it has to run on a standard road as well as fly in the sky without a smallest problem and with fewer number of transitions from a car to an aircraft. Thus the concept itself is quite complicated as one has to implement the comforts of a car inside the complex environment of a small aircraft which should be able to fly and driven.

There are currently a few flying cars which are available commercially. One of them is Terrafugia "flying cars." It has recently been granted special exemptions by The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as Transition "roadable aircraft." Most of the other prototypes and concepts are in development.

The inspiration:

The factors that inspired most of the people and automotive companies to think about the concept of a car which can fly too, came firstly from the original Flying Car, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which was used as a movie and stage prop. Six versions of the car were made for a movie and one of them was a flying car.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's Flying car version mainly caught the attention due to its toughness factor. It was built strong enough to handle dirt roads, cobblestone streets and could jump off a couple of stairs too! It's engine is a Ford V-6, and ship builders crafted out the wooden passenger compartment. An automatic transmission was also added, but details and instruments were added to make it look like an original touring car in early 1900s. These details about the car helped in idealizing a flying car which should be strong enough and well designed to run on the streets and when needed, fly in the air.

Where we are now:

If you want to see a fully working flying car, you need not wait as the "Transition Roadable Aircraft" which is discussed above, is going to be manufactured commercially by Terrafugia, a Woburn, Massachusetts based company. Its development can be called as a milestone in this field. The features included in the car are well enough to take care of both air and street ride.

Special tires are being used for the car due to their ultra-lightness which will not weigh down the aircraft. Panes made of poly-carbonate material are used instead of heavy glass windows giving the car a relief in its weight and shatterproof strength.

Physically, it is housed with wings with a span of 27.5ft. The wings can be folded down and when not in use, that is when being used as a car only, are double-folded to the car sides. Normally, a flight of 460 miles can be covered up in a single go and the speed can strike up to 115 miles/hr. Unleaded petrol is used as fuel and parking can be done in your own garage.

As it is a special car, it needs you to fulfill some special requirements to fly it. One of them is, you must have a flying license and the second and most important is that it will start only by entering a secure code.

What makes it stand out:

There is no doubt that flying cars are going to come into existence in a few decades and will be a part of our daily street view but it is most important to check out the pros and cons of these so as to check their sustainability in today's scenario. There are some design aspects which differentiate the flying cars from the conventionally designed cars such as the window panes, the tires, the body structure and engine used in the car.

The advantages of a flying car are listed below:

• No traffic jams.
• The user can get an experience of both the pilot and a driver in the same vehicle.
• Routes can be counted on displacement, not distance, that is one can directly go to his destination without following a specific route.
• Time saving.
• One can fly to a holiday spot without any preplanned reservations.

By these points, one may say that it is going to be a luxury rather than being a necessity. But we should remember, the things that were luxury before are counted under necessity today (e.g. cellphones). So, at this point we can say that the developments under this product are going in the right way and would provide some fruitful results.

The dark side:

A coin have two sides, similarly, anything with a number of advantages have some disadvantages too. The minus points incorporated in a flying car are:

• One needs a runway for taking off the transitioned plane.
• There would be another government body controlling air traffic for common people with flying cars.
• Remote locations are not to be covered under safe landing, which can be accessed using a normal car.
• The car would be consuming tremendous amount of fuel and thus would not be an efficient option.
• Their maintenance would be costly too.

Most of these would only happen when the car would be in existence and thus the disadvantages are a bit of presumptions made for a product like flying car.

Where do we go from here:

Here are some examples of flying cars which could be seen in coming future:

1. The 'leave a piece at the airport' (LPA): For which you can leave the flight components at the airport and drive away with the car. For taking a flight, you have to go back to the airport and attach the pieces back to fly the thing.

2. The 'take-it-all-with-you' (TAW): After landing is done, the so called airplane will be converted into a car after a series of transitions.

Two types of vehicles can be followed up in the latter category:

• The integrated flying car with removable wings.
• The modular flying car with integrated foldable wings.

These type of speculations are constantly made everyday by the auto-enthusiasts.Related trends:

There are a series of cars which are currently being conceptualized and designed after the success of Terrafugia's flying car, some of them are:

1. Moller’s Autovolantor

Moller's Autovolantor promises to materialize our dream of flying a cars like the cartoon series Jetsons. Simply shift the gear to flying mode and zoom off vertically. This two-seater car is capable of lifting off vertically and fly for about 15 minutes at the speeds up to 150 mph.

2. Egg-shaped flying concept car

Named as the Aeon project, this award winning project is a considerate amalgamation of mobility and 3D applications. The egg-shaped car shows controls on the front screen and enables the pilot to learn about the surroundings by spinning the screen into a visual story. It is a total interactive learning experience.

3. Pal V flying car

PAL-V (Personnel Air Vehicle) is designed by a Dutch inventor John Bakker. Actually, it is a flying gyrocopter tricycle which is titled PAL-V. The things that is even more distinctive in this vehicle is its tilt ability on road to avoid any congestion. It is expected to cost around €100,000 ($141,726).

4. High Road Aerocar

Leigh Aerosystems has designed a number of weapon systems and drones for the military which provides them the expertise in designing a model that could actually fly. The key flight operational and performance goals include cruise speed of 180 mph at the speed of 15,000 ft., 20,000 ft ceiling and a mile range of 500.

5. YEE flying car

YEE is a flying car conceptualized by designers Pan Jiazhi, Zhu Wenxi and Lai Zexin from the Department of Industrial Design in School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering in China. YEE is designed with an aim to meet the needs of people living in the modern cities.