Why your car doesn’t fly

We can all count on one hand the number of people we trust behind the wheel enough to get into a flying car with them

With the possible exception of the jetpack, no other means of transportation has captured the popular imagination in the twentieth century more than the personal air vehicle (PAV).

Still, for all the consumer interest, it’s 2012 and nothing is even close to market. NASA announced in 2005 that the year’s Centennial Challenges program would focus on PAVs, and awarded the winners two years later, but none of the winners has released a commercial product. Boeing announced that the company was researching the feasibility of PAVs in 2004, but has announced nothing since then except this concept video from 2011.

So why aren’t flying cars available yet? One reason is that the definition of “street-legal” varies from country to country, and in the U.S. from state to state. While this allows for a considerable amount of variation in vehicle designs, it also places a number of design constraints which normally don’t apply to aeronautical engineering.

It’s certainly possible to produce a street-legal vehicle that’s capable of flight — both the PAL-V and Terrafugia are both working prototypes. But they’re a far cry from the Zemeckisian dream of shuttling your children through the skies to soccer practice. And what happens when your uncle has a few too many at Christmas dinner and takes off in his flying car? And what about rush hour? No one wants to end up stuck in traffic at a few thousand feet on limited fuel. Without the navigation systems that Boeing described in their initial feasibility study, these vehicles will never be cleared for anyone to use with just a few hours of driver’s ed and a road test — if you want to fly one of them today, you’ll need a pilot’s license.

And let’s be honest, since we’re all good friends here: we can all count on one hand the number of people we trust behind the wheel enough to get into a flying car with them.

Still, while one might think the FAA would have a few bones to pick with the idea of flying cars, the administration has been remarkably friendly to the nascent industry, classifying the Terrafugia Transition as a “light sports plane”, even though it was 120 pounds too heavy to quality. This distinction is crucial to the technology’s adoption, as it requires only 20 hours of flight time (5 of it solo) instead of double that, in addition to night training and medical certification.

If you don’t have one and yet still dream of flying your own personal aircraft, you might consider the safer (if a bit controversial) option of commercial drones.