Where are the Flying Cars That Everyone Predicted?
It feels as though we’ve been promised some form of flying car from the very first moment that automobiles hit our streets. Look at pretty much any of the earliest forms of science fiction and flying cars were discussed as though they would be an inevitability rather than a fantasy.
When Back to The Future was released in 1985, it saw ‘Doc’ take Marty to 2015 where they encountered numerous flying cars wherever they looked. Fast-forward a decade to that fictional future and there are no flying cars worthy of the name.
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Given the fact that the first practical automobile, the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, was built in 1886, it isn’t outrageous to ask ‘Where are the flying cars we were promised?’ The reality is that they may not actually be all that far away, with the kinds of things that we have grown used to seeing in the movies now being put through their paces by engineers and scientists around the world.
Of course, the ones that we grew used to seeing in the movies all look like actual cars that can fly, whereas the reality is likely to be somewhat different.
The First Mention of Flying Cars
In 1901, a German immigrant to the United States of America, Gustave Whitehead, claimed to have flown a powered aircraft that had propelled itself along the roads to where the experience was taking place.
Although this has all but been debunked since, it is a good indication of how early on people were enamoured by the idea of a flying car. In 1917, Glenn Curtiss, an aircraft designer, created an ‘autoplane’, which boasted a pusher propeller for flight as well as removable flight surfaces.
The 1917 Curtiss Autoplane is one of the earliest attempts to create a flying car.
Designed by aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss, it was unveiled at the Pan-American Aeronautical Exposition in New York in 1917.
The vehicle was powered by a 100-horsepower Curtiss OXX engine. pic.twitter.com/NhrPqA0skM
— Sacrinos Π 🇰🇪✊🏿 (@dnahinga) November 11, 2023
In the decades that followed, other attempts were made to build flying cars that had different levels of success. In 1935, for example, Constantinos Vlachos built a ‘tri-phibian’ vehicle that has a circular wing, but it caught fire during a demonstration in Washington DC when the engine exploded.
In the majority of instances where some form of flying car was attempted, however, they were little more than unwieldy things that seemed to have the majority of a plane’s workings virtually bolted to a normal car, making them entirely unpractical.
Electric Vertical Take-Off & Landing Aircraft
In the majority of instances, what most companies are building towards when it comes to their ‘flying cars’ are vehicles that are actually a lot closer in their nature to electric helicopters.
Known as electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs for short, these forms of vehicle will not be able to provide you with the kind of thing that you were promised if you watched The Jetsons as a youngster. You will not be able to drive them along and then take off into the sky, flying as far as you want.
The Ryse Recon is an ultralight Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing vehicle eVTOL
— Your Future Machine (@yourfuturemachine.bsky.social) 5 December 2024 at 05:33
Part of the thinking behind the eVTOL is that airplanes need a lot of space in order to be able to take off and land, whereas helicopters simple move vertically up into the air.
If you could design something with the body of a car but the take-off ability of a helicopter then the flying cars of the future would be one step closer. Some of the world’s biggest car makers are looking to design exactly that, such as the BMW Skai, the Hyundai Supernal S-A2 and the Archer Midnight.
A Real ‘Flying Car’
On the 12th of June 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration in the US issued a flying car model with a ‘Special Airworthiness Certificate’, allowing the vehicle that had been created by Alef Aeronautics with the right to fly the aircraft in limited locations, such as for research, development and exhibitions.
The move represented a huge leap forward in the world of flying vehicles, even if the notion of a ‘flying car’ such as we have been promised by movies for decades remains very much a thing of complete and utter fantasy.
The big difference when it comes to Alef Aeronautics is the fact that the vehicle does actually look a little bit like a futuristic car. It is also designed to be significantly more friendly to the planet that petrol-powered cars, with huge fans underneath it causing it to lift off and then land.
You could drive some of the way and fly over obstacles like traffic jams, or you could simply choose to fly for the entirety of your journey. The big problem is likely to be price tag: if you want to buy yourself a flying car from Alef Aeronautics it will cost you around $300,000.