Where Are All The Flying Cars?

“Science fiction has long seen us somewhat fascinated with the concept of flying cars”

One of the earliest attempts on record of creating a ‘flyable car’ was by Glenn Curtiss in 1917, with the invention of the Curtiss Autoplane. Built of aluminium, the Autoplane had detachable wings, propeller, and tail. It also had four wheels and a cabin akin to any other motorcar of the time. Largely regarded as the world’s first successful attempt at a roadable aircraft, the Autoplane failed to actually take flight – apart from a few hops. Within months of the first prototype being developed, the US officially entered into WWI. At this point, attentions were diverted and the vehicle was dismantled, with its parts repurposed towards the war effort. 
The next great attempt at a roadable aircraft came in 1946, when Robert Fulton invented the Airphibian. The Airphibian was also an aluminium-bodied vehicle, with removable wings and tail, but plane-sized wheels. It took just five minutes to convert the plane into a vehicle capable of driving on a road. Notably, the Airphibian was the first flying car to be certified by the Civil Aeronautics Administration, the predecessor of the Federal Aviation Administration in the US. While four prototypes were built and flown, the Airphibian failed due to a lack of investors. 

The reality is, there have been dozens of attempts at creating roadable aircraft, and inventors and engineers have been working on developing flying cars since the inception of powered flight. 

So, where the bloody hell are they?! 

Andrew Glass, author of Flying Cars: The True Story, says that the biggest challenge for those early inventors in creating a flying car was “to create a machine that is robust, rugged and probably heavy enough to withstand the rigours of the road, at the same time as a machine that is light enough, aerodynamic enough, to be safe in the air”. 

“Most engineers claim that although it was an interesting problem, it was not a solvable one,” he added. “The balance would always be wrong, or the weight would be wrong, and you could never do better than creating an inferior car that would also be an inferior airplane.”

And with that, dreams of a flying car were damned to exist only in the realm of science fiction. Or were they? 

The vision 

Before we get any further, let’s look into what the ‘imagined’ flying car actually is, and if we ever truly had a shot at seeing it born into existence. 

As kids, we all surely envisioned a car, much like the ones our parents drove around day in and day out, that could convert from roadworthy to airworthy with the touch of a button, right? Perhaps it simply levitates off the ground, and travels along bitumen roads as does any car, simply without touching the ground. Or maybe it’s capable of more complex aerial movement à la Blade Runner. Is it even possible for this type of flying car to exist, be it now or ever? 

“Many of us share the idealistic vision of the ‘hover car’, but in reality, that idea assumes we have access to power sources that we don’t have yet, and realistically, won’t really have in the future,” explains Dr Sonya Brown, a senior lecturer at UNSW. 

“It’s almost like you’d need a low-powered set of jetpacks below every vehicle to produce lift, and then how would you propel forward? Not to mention, it’s not very efficient to put a whole bunch of jetpacks on a vehicle anyway.” 

So, these factors combine to create a whole bunch of “technological challenges” in the creation of the hover cars we would have once imagined.

“We just don’t really have technology to make multiple jet engines, or jetpacks, that efficient, and it definitely doesn’t align with the current movement towards green and sustainable transport,” Dr Brown says. 

Flying cars in the 21st century 

As you’ve seen, development of the flying automobile was largely deemed by engineers and inventors alike as too difficult to accomplish in the 20th century. Planes are simply too light to be sturdy and durable cars on a populated road, while cars are merely too heavy to be able to easily and conveniently produce lift and fly. 

But that doesn’t mean that we haven’t yet invented flying cars. Of course we have, dear reader! We’ve been working on this for over a century! Naturally, however, they do look a little different to what we visualised back in the ’80s.

“Essentially the flying cars that we’ve seen actually developed and built are quite different to hover cars,” Dr Brown says. 

“They’re effectively a cross between a large drone and small aircraft. Like drones, they often have four or more large rotors, or propellers, which are used to create lift, so the vehicle takes off vertically from the ground. But like an aircraft, they usually also have something that looks like traditional wings, so that the vehicle can maintain horizontal flight, too.” 

Propellers? Where were the DeLorean’s propellers? Science fiction didn’t prepare me for this! 

“Obviously, propellers and wings are a lot simpler than hundreds of tiny jet packs taped to the bottom of your car. But perhaps most importantly, these rotors can be electrically powered with batteries, and that allows them to be renewable,” Dr Brown explains. 

“They can be recharged using solar power, wind power, and this way, using these flying cars doesn’t generate huge emissions like traditional cars, and definitely not like we would be using hover cars.” 

Going green 

There are a few key reasons as to why the flying cars of the 21st century have turned out a little different to how we first anticipated they might. First, there have been a few major technological advancements in aviation technologies since the Curtiss Autoplane of 1917. 

For decades, public attention has turned to making aviation ‘greener’ through alternative fuels and electric aircraft. New entrants into the aviation space are put under even more pressure than the incumbents to make sure their products align with new-age ideals of environmentally friendly operations. 

Plus, the discovery and use of composite materials in aviation meant that aircraft could be built to be both strong and durable, as well as lighter than ever. As much as it was a gamechanger for aviation, the use of composites appeared to be the answer to the plight of 20th century inventors. 

“The flying cars that we’ve seen developed and built are a bit different to hovercars. They’re effectively a cross between a large drone and a small aircraft”

At the same time, in the last few decades alone, cities have continued to grow and become ever more populated, putting increasing pressure on congested roads and public transport systems. This fact alone has meant that the need for a ‘flying car’ to be as drivable as it is flyable has largely disappeared. Instead, many of the flying cars in development now work to solve transportation problems in populous cities, and do it without adding excessive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. 

“So today, when we talk about flying cars, we’re talking about a space that’s quite broad,” Dr Brown says. 

“Flying cars, air taxis, even eVTOLs, these terms have basically come to mean the same thing, and they all fall under the umbrella term of ‘Urban Air Mobility’, which works to solve those transportation problems of modern cities.”

Does this mean I’ll never drive my own flying car? 

Fear not dear reader, there is all the chance in the world that one day you’ll get to pilot your own flying car, should you so wish. Despite changing requirements over time, there are some select companies around the world that have continued to press on to make the car/ plane hybrid dream become a reality. Volvo-owned Terrafugia received FAA certification for its ‘Transition’ vehicle earlier this year. Transition presents as a small airplane with retractable wings that leaves it capable of comfortably parking within a single garage space, though the vehicle is yet to be acknowledged by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration as being safe for the road. Baby steps. 

Meanwhile in Slovakia, a company called Klein Vision completed a 35-minute test flight of its ‘AirCar’ this past July. The company says its sports car/ aircraft hybrid converts from plane to car in just three minutes. Its ‘cabin’ looks as good as any sports car, and its wings fold and retract to sit at the car’s side. 

However, it is highly unlikely that, in your lifetime, the flying car will entirely replace the use of your current car. According to Dr Brown, our new definition of flying cars, including eVTOLs and flying taxis, is meant to “complement” the existing car and road system, instead of completely replacing it, and ease congestion on popular routes. 

Rollout wise, Dr Brown sees the entrance of flying cars to the market occurring in “several stages”. 

“Initially, this technology is likely to be quite limited to emergency services for example, and then expand into rideshare services, similar enough to Uber. It could replace bus or train lines in certain areas,” she says. 

“But I do see these vehicles entering into the general public as well, and I think that’s the long-term goal for many companies in this space.” 

With that being said, Dr Brown says she sees at least another 10 to 15 years of development before this market is opened up to the general public. 

The challenges ahead for urban air mobility

Today, there are a number of big players that are heavily invested in urban air mobility (UAM) solutions, from Hyundai to Airbus, and even Uber. And while it appears we get closer every day, there are still a number of significant hurdles that need to be jumped through before these flying cars become the norm. 

While we now have the technology to create flying cars, we’re still lacking a lot of the infrastructure that we need to use these solutions in the real world. 

“Traffic management is the biggest challenge currently to the UAM space. It’s very different to roads, you can’t just have traffic lights and stop signs up in the air,” Dr Brown says. 

“Once we’re seeing hundreds or even thousands of these vehicles in the air at once, it’s going to pose a huge problem.” 

Dr Brown adds that the current state of the UAM market remains in largely ‘developmental’ territory, with few companies yet past the prototype stage. 

“Initially, this technology is likely to be quite limited to emergency services… But I do see these vehicles entering into the general public”

“It means that right now, there isn’t a lot of public information out there about the specifics of these kinds of systems, and how these vehicles are going to be able to talk to each other, or the flight paths they’ll use,” she explains. 

“The current data is more based on how fast the vehicle can go, and how long its battery lasts. But realistically, we really do need to know the practicality of these vehicles and how they’ll manoeuvre through shared airspaces and interact with other flying cars, let alone planes, or drones.” 

Dr Brown says the solution to such problems will need to be built-in to the design of these machines, and will also fall on regulators, town planners and cities themselves, and there’s still a lot of work to be done on both fronts. 

“General collision avoidance systems will need to be builtin to these machines, as will communication systems, so vehicles can actively talk to each other and determine things like who has right away. Ideally, we want a lot of this to be happening autonomously when these vehicles are in the air,” she says. “Plus, long term there’s an aim to have these vehicles being pilotless or remotely piloted, which adds another layer of complication. 

“From a town planning point of view, maybe these vehicles will fly through set corridors for example, just like big highways except in the air. So, if I’m headed north-east from point A to point B there might be a corridor for that direction that I can jump into and know I won’t collide with someone coming at me from a different direction. So, there’s still a lot of work in the regulatory space to actually allow for these vehicles to take flight as they’re intended.”