First Practical Flying Car? Terrafugia Transition

Flying cars have been around for decades in one form or another, but could this be the first practical one?

When I think of what a flying car looks like, I don't immediately imagine something quite like the Terrafugia Flying Car. This vehicle has transformable, foldable wings that allow it to drive on the road as well as fly. At last month's Oshkosh, the company announced that many of the cutting-edge features of its 'Transition' flying car would be tested soon taking it one step closer to its manufacturing goal of 2019.

If you're wanting to know more about this odd-looking craft, the main power system is a Rotax 912iS 100HP 4 Cylinder Fuel engine which takes normal automotive fuel - that's handy for filling up at a normal gas station. This engine drives a pusher prop found on the rear of the fuselage pod when in the air. For driving on the road, hybrid-electric powered motors power small wheels. Whilst in road-mode, it doesn't exactly look like a plane, but it also doesn't really look like a car either. If anything, it seems to be towing itself.

The range (while in flight mode) is 400 miles at a modest top speed of 100mph. The service ceiling is 9000ft. Despite these humble performance stats, flying this will still burn over 5 gallons of fuel every hour.

One thing you might be thinking is 'that doesn't look all that safe'. Not to worry, though, the Transformer packs in some pretty cool safety features that are often absent from other light aircraft. Obviously, though, it also has to meet requirements of being a car as well as a plane!

Airbags
Emergency parachutes
Seatbelts with automatic retractors
Structurally rigid cabin engineered to meet auto safety standards
3 rearview cameras in drive mode

So is this a 'practical' flying car? When production starts in 2019, we will see. However, for now, it doesn't really seem likely. Aside from some of the obvious 21st-century engineering that has gone into designing this aircraft, it seems that the concept really hasn't progressed all that far from the flying cars of the last century. It's also hard to imagine who the buyer of this aircraft would actually be; as both a car and an airplane, the machine seems to be severely limited in both disciplines. This has always been the problem. For this reason, you'd probably be better off buying a second-hand Cessna to go along with the car you already own.