“Mark my words: a combination airplane and motorcar is coming. You may smile, but it will come.” (Henry Ford, 1940)

The flying car idea has been around as long as cars, and possibly people dreamed of flying carriages before that (which would certainly have been accompanied by their own hazards!). Henry Ford experimented with small, personal aircraft as early as the 1920s. He hoped to develop a flying car that would be as affordable and widely adopted as his Model T. Unfortunately, the prototypes (really very small, one-seater planes) were not terribly successful, described by Charles Lindbergh as “the worst plane I ever flew.” A crash killed the test pilot and put a damper on the program.

Ford’s Sky Flivver was a fixed wing aircraft, meaning that it would have had to attain specific forward speeds to remain airborne, which would tend to make taking off, landing, and negotiating a sky full of traffic more complicated. Licensing and regulation were less restrictive in the dawn of aviation, but one would certainly need to be an accomplished pilot to use this type of craft for personal travel. The wingspan would also have made it less realistic for road travel in today’s world of congested roads.

Aeromobil expects to bring its first model to market in two to three years. The craft will be street-legal when the wings are folded, and require a pilot’s license to fly.

The first models from Aeromobil and Terrefugia will also be more like conventional airplanes, with folding wings and wheels to make them drivable. However, Terrefugia is planning its next generation TF-X to incorporate folding, tiltable propellers, permitting it to takeoff and land vertically, as well as hover and glide. The addition of self-driving technology will simplify the requirements for piloting these craft, as the computer will control most of the decisions about takeoff, flight path, and landing.

The problem is that — despite a near-perfect safety record for semi- and fully-autonomous cars to date — people don’t trust them. Are they more likely to trust an autopilot in the sky? And what if concerns about hacking internet-connected driving technology are realized? Flying car manufacturers will have to overcome both perceived and real security concerns in order to court consumers for their new technology.

In the Netherlands, PAL-V has based its flying car on a combination gyroscope and motorcycle.

Power is another issue. The first generation Terrafugia cars have gasoline engines; they are expected to have a range of 400 miles on an 87 liter tank. The next generation will have a hybrid engine, with batteries charging during flight. Other versions of the technology are expected to be fully electric. A lot of progress has been made recently in the technologies needed for reliable electric vehicle operation, including steady advances in battery technology, but batteries are still heavy and their capacity might be expected to be reduced at the lower temperatures experienced during flight. Like other electric vehicles, these cars will represent a non-stationary load on the electric grid, since they might be charged in different locations from one day to the next. If they were to become truly mainstream, this variability would complicate electric power planning and operation.