The Flying Car

In other news today, it appears that a flying car is finally going up for test flights. There have been several other attempts to create personal air commuter vehicles over the past several years, all of them unsuccessful. This one, however, with a price point at $200,000, appears to be in within the price realm of “imaginable” for the upper-middle-class who might spend a similar amount on an aircraft… and a big loan for said aircraft.

All that said, $200,000 is a lot of money for a two-seater. For comparison, you can pick up a second-hand Robison R-22 two-seater helicopter for considerably less, and with the $80,000 you save you can afford the maintenance and fuel for a few years. Sure, you can’t drive it around town after you land it, but it sure as heck can land a lot more places than a flying car can.

Heck, it’s even cheaper to build or buy yourself a brand-new RV-4 two-seater, and buy a couple of really nice economy cars for that price, too.

I think it’s sort of like the Space Shuttle problem. Originally, the Space Shuttle was pitched to the American population as a cheap, re-usable launch platform. The reality has turned out that it’s much cheaper to use disposable launch platforms than to worry about trying to use the same shuttle over and over again… and we’re not talking about a small difference, either. The difference in price between launching a disposable platform into space vs. the Shuttle re-usable platform is HUGE.

Similarly, I think it will be much cheaper to own an aircraft and a couple of cars than it will be to own a combination vehicle for many, many years to come.

That said, though, NOTHING would beat the cool factor — or nerd factor — of pulling into the corporate parking lot with your automobile/airplane hybrid.