Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, Hey there be one, and welcome to Forward
Speaker 1: Thank read the podcast that looks at the future and
Speaker 1: says the power of love is a curious thing. I'm
Speaker 1: John Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocalbon, I'm Joe McCormick. What what
Speaker 1: was the Oh no, it's okay, we're going back to
Speaker 1: the future. Yeah, we're going back to the future. Gonna
Speaker 1: go back in time, Yes we are. What we're not
Speaker 1: talking about time machines today. That will be a future
Speaker 1: podcast or maybe a past one. But no, today we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about flying cars. I was trying to render
Speaker 1: the future perfect tints of mind blown, mind will be blown,
Speaker 1: mind will have been will have been blown? Yeah? Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: Flying cars the ultimate futurism cliche, right, articles magazine covers
Speaker 1: that you know, you tube videos. Where's my flying car?
Speaker 1: I thought it would be the future. Where when am
Speaker 1: I going to get my flying car? Well, today we're
Speaker 1: finally going to talk about it, So let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about first of all, the the whole science
Speaker 1: fiction angle of this. I mean, clearly, like when when
Speaker 1: I say when you hear the term flying car, what
Speaker 1: is it that you think of? Like, what's what's the
Speaker 1: thing that pops into your head? Blade Runner? Blade Runner
Speaker 1: a combination of like the Jetsons and the Fifth Element,
Speaker 1: which probably explains a lot about me. See, I always
Speaker 1: think of Back to the Future, but but I totally
Speaker 1: I've seen all the other ones you've mentioned, and all
Speaker 1: of those also are somewhere in there. I mean, I
Speaker 1: love the design a blade Runner, and I love how
Speaker 1: how grungy the flying cars are in Fifth Element. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're so grungy in all these movies. You wonder like,
Speaker 1: why why hasn't haven't people just been completely disgusted by
Speaker 1: the idea of flying cars. The idea of it is
Speaker 1: so novel, or at least you would think it's novel.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, the idea of a flying car
Speaker 1: is pretty old. We'll get into that. Uh. The idea
Speaker 1: is novel enough in the sense that we don't have
Speaker 1: flying cars everywhere that I think people are still fascinated
Speaker 1: by it. But they love this idea of a future
Speaker 1: where flying cars are not only a reality, they've been
Speaker 1: around long enough to become mundane. And I mean, it
Speaker 1: seems so easy just if you don't know anything. Sure,
Speaker 1: you just look at it, like we've had airplanes and
Speaker 1: cars for a hundred years before. Particle physics seems really
Speaker 1: easy if you don't know anything. Divorced from reality, science
Speaker 1: is fun. Um well, science is fun anyway. And and
Speaker 1: also I mean that I don't think that anyone who
Speaker 1: drives has ever not had many moments in a day
Speaker 1: where they're just sitting in traffic and it's terrible and
Speaker 1: you you just wish that you could just rise up
Speaker 1: on jets and just fly right over the rest of
Speaker 1: the rest of the grid. Luck. Yeah, No, that's that's
Speaker 1: a captivating well, especially if you live someplace like Atlanta
Speaker 1: or Los Angeles, someplace that is known for terrible traffic,
Speaker 1: and you get into that, you know, it's it's a Thursday,
Speaker 1: and it's the fourth straight day in a row, and
Speaker 1: you cannot you can see the exit that you need
Speaker 1: to take, and you know it's gonna be another hour
Speaker 1: before you can actually get there. Yes, exactly. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: and that's those days. You can easily imagine a world where, um,
Speaker 1: you know, a flying car would be welcomed with great
Speaker 1: acclaim by the entire populace. Because it would, at least
Speaker 1: in theory, mean you would no longer be stuck on
Speaker 1: this road, stuck behind everybody else. And like we mentioned,
Speaker 1: you know, people have thought that this was a pretty
Speaker 1: cool thing for an extremely long time. Right. Um, I
Speaker 1: think the concept came up really just after the invention
Speaker 1: of both cars and also airplanes. Yeah. Yeah, in fact, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean no, no, less of an authority than Henry
Speaker 1: Ford commented on this, right yeah in ninety he said,
Speaker 1: quote mark my words, a combination airplane and motor car.
Speaker 1: It's coming. You may smile, but it will come. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you look at the history of of cars,
Speaker 1: and you look at the history of airplanes, and then
Speaker 1: you look at the history of people trying to make cars,
Speaker 1: what are airplanes? Uh? It turns out Henry Ford was
Speaker 1: kind of behind the times, actually, So you gotta go
Speaker 1: all the way back. So five is really when you
Speaker 1: get the You get Carl Friedrich Benz, who created the
Speaker 1: first guest line powered automobile. Uh. And then you jump
Speaker 1: ahead to nineteen o three and that's when the Right
Speaker 1: Brothers had their famous flight, which, depending upon which authority
Speaker 1: you're looking at, was the first heavier than air aircraft
Speaker 1: that was able to fly the first fixed wing control,
Speaker 1: fixed wing powered heavier than aircraft as opposed to say,
Speaker 1: a balloon or something like yeah and eve, And even
Speaker 1: then you have people saying actually, but anyway, nineteen o
Speaker 1: three was widely recognized as the first airplane flight. Well,
Speaker 1: you don't don't have to wait until nineteen seventeen. So
Speaker 1: just a little over decade later, when Glenn Curtis had
Speaker 1: suggested creating something he called the Curtis auto plane, which
Speaker 1: would have been more or less a plane that you
Speaker 1: could drive around. And in fact, a lot of the
Speaker 1: early flying car concepts were this level, right, this model.
Speaker 1: Even even these days, I mean we do have technically
Speaker 1: flying cars, but all of them are really more drivable planes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're really airplanes that have detachable elements to them, and
Speaker 1: then you drive the vehicle out to an airstrip attach
Speaker 1: whatever those elements are. Usually it's wings and the propeller
Speaker 1: and maybe some other elements as well, and then you
Speaker 1: you take off as if it were just a regular
Speaker 1: light aircraft. Right. So, uh, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: the early ones. Robert Edison Fulton Jr. Created one a
Speaker 1: year later, uh, consolidated vaulty developed the conveir Car, which
Speaker 1: was a two door sedan with detachable airplane unit that
Speaker 1: you could convert into a plane. Um. These were all
Speaker 1: vehicles that were kind of built in the prototype stage,
Speaker 1: never went into actual manufacture due to various problems, either
Speaker 1: financial or technological. So for example, Robert Dyson Fulton couldn't
Speaker 1: get UM funding, so I could never really go into production.
Speaker 1: Whereas the convert Car crashed on its third test flight
Speaker 1: and that pretty much killed the project because yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no one wanted to risk the money in it, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, risk is a big thing. In nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: you have Paul Muller who introduces the x M two,
Speaker 1: which was the first prototype of his sky car concept,
Speaker 1: which is like, it reads like a comedy of errors
Speaker 1: if you go through the whole ordeal, right yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one where the idea was pretty cool. It
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle,
Speaker 1: which is going to be something we'll talk about little
Speaker 1: bit later to that will be ready in time for woodstock,
Speaker 1: you know. But the idea was that it was going
Speaker 1: to be this thing that could take off from anywhere
Speaker 1: and land practically anywhere. With enough clearance obviously, but that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to go to like an airstrip necessarily,
Speaker 1: and it was going to run on fuel that was
Speaker 1: similar to airplane fuel, and uh, you know, it was
Speaker 1: a project that was kicking around. Even as late as
Speaker 1: two thousand three. They had a demonstration of a vehicle,
Speaker 1: but it really just kind of hovered it and fly
Speaker 1: and um by two thousand nine, there still wasn't a
Speaker 1: flying car to show off, and the company at that
Speaker 1: point had spent around a hundred million dollars in investment
Speaker 1: capital trying to do this and had not created a
Speaker 1: successful car over four decades since. Yeah, can I say, honestly,
Speaker 1: when I look at pictures of this, it looks to
Speaker 1: me like they were just trying to create something that
Speaker 1: looked like what you imagine when you think of a
Speaker 1: flying car. So in other words, you think they were
Speaker 1: just kind of like from the appearance, you look at
Speaker 1: and you think, oh, that thing is meant to fly,
Speaker 1: But then you start to think, wait, how would that
Speaker 1: actually work? It looks like a sci fi illustration. It does.
Speaker 1: And eventually Mueller would go and file for Chapter eleven protection,
Speaker 1: so bankruptcy protection. But the company itself is still operating,
Speaker 1: although in a much more limited capacity. So, you know,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of other attempts to create a
Speaker 1: flying car that all met with you know, kind of
Speaker 1: limited success if any. Most of them didn't go beyond
Speaker 1: the prototype stage, or they had very modest flying capabilities,
Speaker 1: like it was more that they had a giant parachute
Speaker 1: and could use a fan to paraglide as opposed to
Speaker 1: powered flight the way we would think of like with
Speaker 1: a propeller or jet engine or something like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of companies that are still working
Speaker 1: quite hard to try and bring a true flying car
Speaker 1: to the market. Uh there's the aero Mobile V two
Speaker 1: point five, which was a propeller driven aircraft that also
Speaker 1: acts like a car. So again more in the lines
Speaker 1: of those early designs where you have the plane that
Speaker 1: kind of strips down and then becomes a vehicle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to take it to the airport or something
Speaker 1: like an airport in order to get in the air, right.
Speaker 1: And then there's a Terrafugia that is planning on bringing
Speaker 1: a car called the Transition to market by two thousand
Speaker 1: and fifteen. Now this one, again is another one of
Speaker 1: those where you would have to take it to an
Speaker 1: airstrip in order to take off, and you would have
Speaker 1: to have a pilot's license in order to operate it,
Speaker 1: because I like sportcraft license. Yeah. Yeah, well, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about that in a bit too. But it's
Speaker 1: not the kind of vehicle that you would you know,
Speaker 1: pull out of the garage and then lift off the
Speaker 1: driveway and blast off into towards your your workplace, right. No,
Speaker 1: I mean that's really the key here, and it's something
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in a bit. But the
Speaker 1: problem is so many of these prototypes we've seen so far, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's an airplane and it's a car,
Speaker 1: but it's not really what people are thinking about when
Speaker 1: they think about a flying car. That certainly includes vt
Speaker 1: O L vertical takeoff and landing. It's something that you
Speaker 1: can lead you from your driveway and go across town.
Speaker 1: It's got versatility like a flying car. I think in
Speaker 1: the way we think of as as far as you know,
Speaker 1: the science fiction approach goes means that you can, you know,
Speaker 1: you can go from point A to point B without
Speaker 1: having to go to an airstrip. On either side of it, uh,
Speaker 1: that anyone would be able to operate it easily, because
Speaker 1: you know, if you have to go through you, if
Speaker 1: you have to jump through hoops in order to get
Speaker 1: certification for it, then that's obviously a barrier that it
Speaker 1: would eventually be affordable so that the average person could
Speaker 1: own it. I mean, we look at these science fiction
Speaker 1: futures and everyone's got a flying car. No one's driving
Speaker 1: a vehicle that is on the ground. So therefore, in
Speaker 1: that world, a flying car has to be around the
Speaker 1: same level of affordability as your personal vehicles are today.
Speaker 1: And and furthermore, something that not only flies that well,
Speaker 1: but also drives as fast as you could possibly want
Speaker 1: it to drive. Right, So it's not like it's not like, well,
Speaker 1: on the ground, it's got a top speed of thirty
Speaker 1: months per hour. Yeah, yeah, which is the case of
Speaker 1: lots of these practical examples that we've been talking about
Speaker 1: that are coming out or in prototype stage anyway these days. Right,
Speaker 1: And the extremely simple requirement of it just needs to
Speaker 1: fit the normal dimensions of a car. Right, have wings
Speaker 1: or propellers or something poking out that's going to knock
Speaker 1: other cars windows off as it passes among the You
Speaker 1: can't park it anywhere, right, Yeah, so Tarafuccia is working
Speaker 1: on well, at least they have a concept. It's not
Speaker 1: even a prototype, it's a concept vehicle called t f X.
Speaker 1: So this hasn't gone any further than the design, the
Speaker 1: initial design phase, as far as I am able to determine. No,
Speaker 1: but not at all. If there's any player in the
Speaker 1: game right now, it's probably them. Yeah, if we're talking
Speaker 1: about a vehicle that the average consumer could use, and
Speaker 1: and it's because the t FX answers a lot of
Speaker 1: the questions, or at least is going to, assuming that
Speaker 1: it it comes out the way the concept is designed,
Speaker 1: it will answer a lot of these challenges we're bringing
Speaker 1: up right now, assuming that everything works a lot of assumptions. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're talking about that vertical takeoff and
Speaker 1: landing um. And they're talking about a lot of automation,
Speaker 1: which is another thing, which is basically the second element
Speaker 1: that the three of us think is pretty important in
Speaker 1: getting this entire flying car thing off the ground. I
Speaker 1: didn't mean to, I tried not. I think it's I
Speaker 1: I do think it's the kind of thing that will
Speaker 1: be required in order for this idea to get any altitude.
Speaker 1: I mean, for this thing to launch, it's going to
Speaker 1: have to be automated. Okay, let's let's break it down,
Speaker 1: all right's free. What are the major concerns with a
Speaker 1: flying car? What are they gonna have? What are the
Speaker 1: challenges they're going to have to answer before it is
Speaker 1: at all feasible for people like you and me. So
Speaker 1: here's one concern, Joe. You know, it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of energy to maintain flight, right, It's not like I
Speaker 1: mean we can look to nature and see that this
Speaker 1: is the case, that it's not something that's a low
Speaker 1: energy kind of activity, even if you have the biological
Speaker 1: design for lack of a better word, to fly, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's hard. It takes more energy to jump
Speaker 1: than to take a step. So in order to get
Speaker 1: a vehicle into the air, it's going to require a
Speaker 1: great deal of energy, which in turn means you have
Speaker 1: to get that energy from someplace. So if it's a
Speaker 1: vehicle that's running on fuel, there are fuel uh considerations
Speaker 1: you have to you have to worry about how much
Speaker 1: fuel do you need to actually get the power that
Speaker 1: you're that's necessary to get into flight and operates safely, right,
Speaker 1: and and the amount of fuel. Okay, let's let's take
Speaker 1: for example, the Tarafugia transition and like a camera Okay,
Speaker 1: you're you're talking for for the transition that that light
Speaker 1: sport craft that they're thinking of releasing like like under
Speaker 1: a thousand pounds and a twenty three gallon tank. A
Speaker 1: camera weighs like three thousand pounds and only has a
Speaker 1: seventeen gallon tank. That's the kind of kind of just
Speaker 1: difference in raw gas power that you're talking about, right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, that's you know, it's it's a big concern.
Speaker 1: And so along with just fuel consumption, that adds into
Speaker 1: a couple of other things you have to worry about,
Speaker 1: like emissions, What what kind of fuel are you burning?
Speaker 1: What sort of emissions are coming out of this car?
Speaker 1: You don't want it to end up being a really, uh,
Speaker 1: the high pollution style mode of transportation because that's something
Speaker 1: that we don't want, right, And and also the expense
Speaker 1: of that kind of fuel. I mean, these days a
Speaker 1: lot of light sport craft can use auto gas rather
Speaker 1: than airplane gas. Um. But it's I mean that's not
Speaker 1: really more and more we're going like, maybe electric engines
Speaker 1: are the way to go because this entire fossil fuel
Speaker 1: thing is an issue. Now. There are some designs that
Speaker 1: have proposed using a hybrid approach where you have some
Speaker 1: fuel for anything that requires a lot of energy, specifically
Speaker 1: taking off and landing. Those tend to require a lot
Speaker 1: of energy to do safely. But then once you reach
Speaker 1: some form of of cruising altitude and speed, switching over
Speaker 1: to electric motors which would allow you to conserve fuel
Speaker 1: that way and also cut down on emissions, depending upon,
Speaker 1: of course, where you get your electricity, because as we
Speaker 1: all know, it's not just a closed system where you know,
Speaker 1: all the electrictity magically comes from a place where pollution
Speaker 1: is just a bad Yeah. I think we should also
Speaker 1: think about the concerns that are involved specifically in vt
Speaker 1: O L and will takeoff and landing um. So one
Speaker 1: of the first things is simply safety. Turns out, vertical
Speaker 1: takeoff and landing is not easy, not just from like
Speaker 1: a fuel consumption standpoint, but it's difficult to do in
Speaker 1: terms of maneuvering of the aircraft. Uh, and it has
Speaker 1: caused a lot of safety problems in the past. That
Speaker 1: the Harrier jumped jet. So that was a vertical takeoff
Speaker 1: and landing jet that was powered by a vector thrust
Speaker 1: turbo fan engine. So basically it sucked air through the
Speaker 1: body of the airplane and could point it downwards to
Speaker 1: lift itself up vertically. But the thing is, um harrier
Speaker 1: jumped jets. While they could take off vertically, that was
Speaker 1: not ideal. It was avoided under all circumstances, except when
Speaker 1: it was absolutely necessary for emergency. I mean, what that
Speaker 1: sounds like to me is that you're you're lighting a
Speaker 1: fire directly underneath yourself and really hoping that the liftoff
Speaker 1: created from it is going to get you out of
Speaker 1: the way of the fire. You're, yeah, it's sort of.
Speaker 1: I mean it's um so it's difficult to do. You
Speaker 1: could take off from like an aircraft carrier that way
Speaker 1: or something like that. I mean, the whole concept was
Speaker 1: so that a jet would be able to take off
Speaker 1: our land anywhere in the in case of nuclear war,
Speaker 1: which would end up you know, targeting military instace exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could. You could keep these things in a park
Speaker 1: somewhere or whatever, you know, wouldn't it wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: be But as it turned out, it was really hard
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, and so that was considered an accident
Speaker 1: prone aircraft. There were a lot of incidents involving the
Speaker 1: Harrier family and it was basically a dangerous aircraft. There's
Speaker 1: an other one, more recent, the bel V twenty two Osprey,
Speaker 1: which also has a reputation for being unsafe. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: has a very controversial safety record. So it had an
Speaker 1: early test period between two thousand, there were four osprey crashes. Uh,
Speaker 1: and together those killed a total of thirty people. And
Speaker 1: so the the airplane has been redesigned and so oh sorry,
Speaker 1: let me explain. The osprey is a tilted rotor, so
Speaker 1: that's a different method of vertical takeoff and landing. What
Speaker 1: what that is is you imagine like a prop plane
Speaker 1: has two propellers out on the wings. Now a normal
Speaker 1: plane those would just be forward facing to generate forward
Speaker 1: thrust and that would that would lift a plane once
Speaker 1: you get enough velocity on a runway. But the way
Speaker 1: of the twenty two osprey works is they start off
Speaker 1: pointing up helicopter wings themselves tilt up so that the
Speaker 1: propellers are facing like helicopter rotors. Yeah, so it uses
Speaker 1: that to lift up off the ground and then it
Speaker 1: can convert into horizontal plane flight as it's coming into
Speaker 1: the air, so like the like the shield Hell Carrier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there it did get a redesign, and it has
Speaker 1: at least on paper, been safer since then. But I
Speaker 1: know there's still controversy, was like how these accidents are classified.
Speaker 1: There's also a scandal about officers military officers um asking
Speaker 1: for maintenance records to be falsified so that it would
Speaker 1: give the osprey a more favorable maintenance record and make
Speaker 1: it look less prone for accidents mistakes. Yeah, essentially, what
Speaker 1: I've read is that some people allege that things that
Speaker 1: may have been problems with the airplane have been classified
Speaker 1: as pilot errors to be but we we don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean, to be fair, anything that's involved with you know,
Speaker 1: a one or two rotor aircraft is incredibly challenging to fly.
Speaker 1: I mean helicopters. You'll you'll hear pilots who have flown
Speaker 1: both airplanes and helicopters talk about how helicopter ers are
Speaker 1: really tricky, Like it's it's not something that's easy to
Speaker 1: pick up, even if you're an accomplished pilot with a
Speaker 1: with an airplane and so one way that these flying cars,
Speaker 1: if they are ever made, could maybe get around that
Speaker 1: is by having multiple rotors to add more stability. You know,
Speaker 1: with a two rotor system, it's it's definitely less stable
Speaker 1: that you see. Some of the drones UH and UH
Speaker 1: and even remote controlled drones out there that are for
Speaker 1: consumer use had between four and eight rotors to provide
Speaker 1: that kind of level of stability. Definitely. Uh. Yeah. Another
Speaker 1: concern with the vt O L technology is, as we
Speaker 1: were just talking about fuel consumption, that uh uses more
Speaker 1: fuel than a regular takeoff and that's one of the reasons, say,
Speaker 1: like a Harrier, when it wanted to take off, even
Speaker 1: though it was capable of vertical takeoff, they would do
Speaker 1: a short runway takeoff sometimes just because that used less fuel.
Speaker 1: And then not only that, but it's it tends to
Speaker 1: be really noisy. Yeah, we all aircraft tend to be
Speaker 1: really noisy, and so that's a big problem. Imagine you're
Speaker 1: trying to say, well, okay, I want to pull out
Speaker 1: into my driveway on the way to work in the
Speaker 1: morning and take off. So if you ever heard a
Speaker 1: helicopter takeoff or an airplane you know close, that's what
Speaker 1: your neighbor next door is going to be hearing when
Speaker 1: you do this. Now, hopefully they can. Because it's a
Speaker 1: smaller aircraft, it will probably be less loud than you know,
Speaker 1: like a Boeing taking off or something. Would hope, Um,
Speaker 1: but still, you know, there's always gonna be that one guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still I can't imagine that they're going to be
Speaker 1: able to make it as quiet as just like a car,
Speaker 1: so and and then and there. You won't. I don't
Speaker 1: think you'll ever have a time where you'll be able
Speaker 1: to just take off directly from your driveway. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I think that the idea that you can do that
Speaker 1: is just probably not gonna happen. Now you I can
Speaker 1: imagine we might have vertical takeoff flying cars where you
Speaker 1: don't have to go to the airport and get runway access,
Speaker 1: but you will have say like a launching area, launch
Speaker 1: designated area, because you would you would want to have
Speaker 1: enough clearance on all sides so that you're not worried
Speaker 1: about banging into a house, building, a tree, a power line,
Speaker 1: any of that kind of stuff. Even even Tara Fuji
Speaker 1: is kind of optimistic. Estimate is that it would take
Speaker 1: a hundred feet or thirty meter diameter fifty feet on
Speaker 1: all sides. Yeah, I think that's pretty standard idea of
Speaker 1: you need at least that much just for safety and clearance. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in that case, what you would have is a
Speaker 1: designated spot where your multi rotor, which could become in
Speaker 1: the form of tilted rotors, it could be we we
Speaker 1: haven't even discussed like what form that this would take,
Speaker 1: mostly because we don't have a lot of examples to
Speaker 1: point out that. There are a lot of different proposals.
Speaker 1: Tara Fuji is ideas tilted rotors. So it's like the
Speaker 1: V twenty two osprey. It has blades that point up
Speaker 1: when you're you're picking up, so it's like a helicopter
Speaker 1: that lifts you off the ground and then they transition
Speaker 1: over to provide forward thrust when you're flying. Um. But
Speaker 1: there are there are other ideas you could use, like
Speaker 1: ducted fans. That's one idea. I think that's what the
Speaker 1: Moller skycar us I believe. So yeah, technically you could
Speaker 1: also have even a jet engine on one of these
Speaker 1: things that I don't imagine that we're kind of see
Speaker 1: that anytime soon. But there are unmanned aerial vehicles that
Speaker 1: use that kind of approach where they've got either a
Speaker 1: combination of rotors and jet engine, or some of them
Speaker 1: just have the jet engine because they launch straight from
Speaker 1: another aircraft. But I don't we're gonna have cars that
Speaker 1: launch off of, you know, another flying vehicle, unless unless
Speaker 1: it happens to have the shield logo on it, in
Speaker 1: which case I totally makes sense. Now, one thing you
Speaker 1: you mentioned about noise pollution, I this is funny because
Speaker 1: it would kind of go the opposite of what you
Speaker 1: were saying about the hybrid fuel use, like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: it'll use fuel for for takeoff because that's the harder task,
Speaker 1: and then it will use an electric motor to power
Speaker 1: it during flight. That does make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: But also I wonder if you could help fight the
Speaker 1: noise problem if you could say, well, is it possible
Speaker 1: to do electric takeoff? I really based upon our battery
Speaker 1: technology right now, I'm really skeptical of that. I don't
Speaker 1: think you would be able to get enough juice to
Speaker 1: do it without having a vehicle so heavy that you
Speaker 1: have defeated the purpose because you had to carry so
Speaker 1: much battery power on board your car to to be
Speaker 1: able to handle that. I think you're almost forced to
Speaker 1: go with the fuel approach for takeoff and landing for
Speaker 1: an average vehicle. I mean, I suppose you could try.
Speaker 1: But unless you're unless you're doing a aircraft approach type thing,
Speaker 1: like on an airstrip where it is the it requires
Speaker 1: less energy than vertical takeoff and landing, I don't know
Speaker 1: that you could get the vehicle light enough for you
Speaker 1: to be able to do that reliably. Uh that is
Speaker 1: that is one of the things that Tarafugia is promising
Speaker 1: on this pie in the sky, an electric political I
Speaker 1: think that's how they're planning to get past the noise pollution. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's to I mean, I mean, I mean you could
Speaker 1: approach it. You could approach it by um focusing on
Speaker 1: body designs, so like how light can we get You
Speaker 1: have to maybe going with like like uh, you know,
Speaker 1: carbon fiber type stuff, lightweight composite materials could maybe like
Speaker 1: cut this thing into total minimum body weight. I can
Speaker 1: see maybe maybe you just really powerful motor. You have
Speaker 1: to make sure that that those a lot of tech
Speaker 1: would have to come together in order to make that
Speaker 1: anywhere near possible. UM. Not to mention the fact that.
Speaker 1: I mean we were talking earlier, you know, like I
Speaker 1: don't trust people driving next to me on Peachtree to
Speaker 1: to not completely kill me with their suv. I really
Speaker 1: don't want that guy in an suv to be fifty
Speaker 1: ft above me. Well, I was going to say also
Speaker 1: that besides that, with the composite materials, you have to
Speaker 1: make sure that they're strong enough to withstand impact. So
Speaker 1: you have to they have to still meet all the
Speaker 1: impact requirements of your basic cars on the road. So
Speaker 1: you have to make sure that whatever material you make
Speaker 1: is both light so that you can cut down on
Speaker 1: the requirements needed to get it into the air, and
Speaker 1: resilience so that if you're in a crash, say just
Speaker 1: driving around in regular car mode, that your car doesn't
Speaker 1: shred into pieces. Yeah, speaking of crashes and getting on
Speaker 1: board with what Lauren just said, I am going to
Speaker 1: go on the record and say I do not want
Speaker 1: human beings piloting these things. I think these should be
Speaker 1: autonomous control or not at all. That that is my vote.
Speaker 1: So you're you're you're saying that you want computers to
Speaker 1: control this. I mean we've already seen, like with uh
Speaker 1: research that came out of Google and other other facilities,
Speaker 1: other other like Carmen. You've acturers that autonomous cars already
Speaker 1: drive safer than human Yeah. From Google's fleet reports. You
Speaker 1: remember that their autonomous cars, they were releasing the safety record,
Speaker 1: and it turns out they've had two accidents. One of
Speaker 1: the times was when a human was driving the autonomous
Speaker 1: it was under manual control. The other time the autonomous
Speaker 1: car was not at fault and got rear ended. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so in other words, better than never been an accident
Speaker 1: after hundreds and hundreds of hours on the roads in California.
Speaker 1: No less, there have been no accidents with the car
Speaker 1: under autonomous control. And as it turns out, like they've
Speaker 1: they've shown that autonomous cars have much better reaction times,
Speaker 1: are able to maintain the proper distance between other vehicles
Speaker 1: much more effectively than human drivers. So I can see
Speaker 1: where you're coming from. And Lauren, I think you agree
Speaker 1: with Joe right that autonomous control is really because, I mean,
Speaker 1: from what you were saying, you don't want, you know,
Speaker 1: Joe SUV to be driving a vehicle directly over your head.
Speaker 1: But if it's a computer that's really really good at it,
Speaker 1: would you be less? I would be less completely terrified. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, my my terror level just just based
Speaker 1: on the technology, I'm not sure. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I can envision a future in which all of this
Speaker 1: has come together. All right, I'm coming down against both
Speaker 1: of you. Yeah, yeah, No, I'm going to say that
Speaker 1: I only want flying cars if they can be controlled manually. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's the only way I want it. I don't want
Speaker 1: to fly. I want I want to be able to
Speaker 1: have the thrill of scaring the heck out of people
Speaker 1: by buzzing the Maverick style from top gun, but in
Speaker 1: a in a car, I want to have that experience
Speaker 1: of feeling like I'm in the fifth element maneuvering this
Speaker 1: car through complex city scapes and weaving my way through
Speaker 1: alley ways. That a robot lady is going to be
Speaker 1: yelling at you about the points on your license. I
Speaker 1: want the robot lady is Siri already does that? So
Speaker 1: that's fine, that's we've already got that part. That part
Speaker 1: of the future is here. So I Well, part of this,
Speaker 1: I think is that I'm assuming I said the word
Speaker 1: license and and that the license that you would have
Speaker 1: to have for this would be a strong piloting license
Speaker 1: that you would have had to have received a certain
Speaker 1: amount of training for. See. Now, I also like that
Speaker 1: because it immediately restricts who else gets the flying car.
Speaker 1: And while I am a man of some means, I
Speaker 1: would be able to get hold of one of these
Speaker 1: flying cars, and thus it would be a status symbol
Speaker 1: making me better than everybody else. Can you play video games?
Speaker 1: So you clearly already know how to pilot things. As
Speaker 1: long as I don't hit the Y button and prematurely
Speaker 1: bail out of the car, I'm good. You're good to go. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: Well I think you're insane. I I would not let
Speaker 1: you near a flying car, especially since you don't even
Speaker 1: drive a regular car. No, I would only drive a
Speaker 1: flying car. I would. I would shell out the money
Speaker 1: to get the license in the car, and then I
Speaker 1: would laugh my way all the way to the ground,
Speaker 1: burning and fiery death. Here there's where I have to
Speaker 1: come out and say that I too, am completely on
Speaker 1: board with if if this happens, it has to be autonomous.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's you, just anecdotally, even without looking
Speaker 1: into the actual facts and figures, just from a person's
Speaker 1: general experience there's a good chance that all of you
Speaker 1: listening to this have either been involved in an accident
Speaker 1: or you know someone who has been. And it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that's common enough where you know, when
Speaker 1: we talk about autonomous cars, we're talking about trying to
Speaker 1: take that element out as much as possible and save
Speaker 1: human lives, which is, you know, that's something that's really
Speaker 1: important to me obviously, and I think for flying cars
Speaker 1: to be a reality so that we have this convenience,
Speaker 1: but yet we don't have this added risk of people
Speaker 1: who could be operating a vehicle under the influence of something.
Speaker 1: Maybe there just suffering an impairment of some sort, or
Speaker 1: maybe they're just not a good driver that they are
Speaker 1: not going to put themselves and other people at risk
Speaker 1: with something that is potentially extremely dangerous. I have another question,
Speaker 1: Uh huh, how are now normally we think of, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get pulled over because I was going five
Speaker 1: miles per hour over the speed limit. So annoying. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm actually glad there are cops out there policing traffic.
Speaker 1: It can it can make you feel inconvenience, but that's
Speaker 1: just you being selfish. Who is going to police the
Speaker 1: vehicles in the air well, if they're autonomous, that definitely
Speaker 1: raises some interesting questions because if there is an error,
Speaker 1: who's at fault? Because if it's an autonomous vehicle and
Speaker 1: if I hit a if I program in the let's
Speaker 1: say it's GPS coordinates for the landing pad that I
Speaker 1: want to go to, and as soon as I get
Speaker 1: onto the lawn pad, the car takes over and it's
Speaker 1: supposed to get me from my point of of departure
Speaker 1: to my destination all by itself. If there's some sort
Speaker 1: of incident along the way, who's it fault? Well, if
Speaker 1: it's autonomous, i'd say the manufacturer. But if it's if
Speaker 1: it's if it's you piling it, obviously it's you. I'm
Speaker 1: envisioning an incredible future without insurance. Whoa where it's all
Speaker 1: just manufacturer liability. This that thought just made me so
Speaker 1: gleefully happy. Um, how okay, all that insurance cost just
Speaker 1: gets rolled right into the costier vehicle right now. I
Speaker 1: could totally deal with that. But but you know, legally speaking,
Speaker 1: if it is a vehicle that's under manual control, you
Speaker 1: would have to have some sort of special license, right right, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean as of right now, in order to fly
Speaker 1: a light sport aircraft, which is like what the what
Speaker 1: the Terrafugia Transition would fall into the category of Um,
Speaker 1: you know it's that's going to be a one to
Speaker 1: two seater playing in with a certain limit of size
Speaker 1: and power, and you don't you don't need a full
Speaker 1: pilot license in order to do that. Basically all you
Speaker 1: need is a driver's license and to show up and
Speaker 1: prove that you're willing to follow rules. Um. But along
Speaker 1: with that, you're not allowed to do things like fly
Speaker 1: at night or just you know, like jaunt into any
Speaker 1: old airspace that you want. You have to follow very
Speaker 1: specific regulations. UM. Once you get a medical certificate, which
Speaker 1: is the full f A A approved doctor checking you
Speaker 1: out and saying that you're of sound physical and mental
Speaker 1: health to fly a plane that could potentially wreck a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. Um, you know that that's within certain classes.
Speaker 1: When you start getting into being able to take more
Speaker 1: than just one person up in a plane with you
Speaker 1: and and fly at night and fly with instrumentation, which
Speaker 1: kind of falls under the category of automatic of automated vehicles,
Speaker 1: I don't know, so, so it's it's a weird conundrum.
Speaker 1: Like I, I can't imagine wanting to allow anyone into
Speaker 1: an airplane who has not had those kind of checks
Speaker 1: done and training done. But if we're talking about autonomous vehicles,
Speaker 1: then I don't know. And so here's a well, let
Speaker 1: me offer one more qualification. Um I I imagine people
Speaker 1: will need even more certification if we're talking about the
Speaker 1: actual flying card, the vertical takeoff and landing, because that
Speaker 1: is tricky. Well, even if it's fully automated, I could
Speaker 1: easily see there being another level of licenses required to
Speaker 1: operate such a vehicle. And uh, and part of that
Speaker 1: is just because you know, we're talking about another area
Speaker 1: where technology is beginning to outpace the legal system, which
Speaker 1: we see all the time, right we all we will
Speaker 1: see this where engineers and scientists and researchers come up
Speaker 1: with these amazing technologies that raise interesting questions of legality
Speaker 1: because the law doesn't apply to that sort of stuff
Speaker 1: because no one had thought of it back when they
Speaker 1: wrote the laws. We are going to blow up this side. No,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be fine. There's not a law against it.
Speaker 1: Um So. Honestly, even light sport aircraft, which which covers
Speaker 1: a whole lot of different experimental craft that are really
Speaker 1: fun that we should totally do a whole episode on sometime. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's even the laws governing who gets a
Speaker 1: license for that are kind of in contention right now
Speaker 1: and and are sort of being outdated by the number
Speaker 1: of people who are building their own experimental craft. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it might be a while before all these questions
Speaker 1: are answered, and it may turn out that, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes the law comes up with answers that seem counterintuitive
Speaker 1: or that some that will actually prevent an entire technology
Speaker 1: from flourishing. So if it ends up that that even
Speaker 1: with a fully autonomous flying car, that you have to
Speaker 1: have a certain level of pilot's license, clearly that would
Speaker 1: be a detriment because there will be a lot of
Speaker 1: companies would say, well, you've just eliminated a huge potential
Speaker 1: market for us, because not everyone's going to go through
Speaker 1: that kind of trouble to be able to operate this
Speaker 1: kind of car. Uh so why should we even go
Speaker 1: into that business. We're not even gonna bother now. So
Speaker 1: it could be, you know, it could be at what
Speaker 1: some would refer to as a disincentive. I hate myself
Speaker 1: right now. But anyway, that's the you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: a concern, right that the law itself, that that even
Speaker 1: if we were to meet all the technological challenges there are,
Speaker 1: there's the chance that the law could end up preventing
Speaker 1: it from flourishing. And and and what about that price point.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's we've we've we've been talking a little
Speaker 1: bit and during other topics about that. But you know,
Speaker 1: like if if a car costs what like thirty thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: if it's new days, um, decent average price to just
Speaker 1: pull out the air sure um, then uh and and
Speaker 1: your average light sport aircraft might cost say a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars the number for example, going back to the Terrafugia. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're quoting that as a potential seven two seventy nine
Speaker 1: thousand dollar cars? Are you talking about the one the transition,
Speaker 1: the the likely one, not even the ridic list one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which doesn't have a price attached to it, because it's
Speaker 1: just ridiculous. It's kind of a day dream at the moment. YEA,
Speaker 1: So two d and seventy nine thousand, when you could
Speaker 1: have bought a vehicle and a light aircraft together for
Speaker 1: less than that and essentially had all of the capabilities
Speaker 1: of the Tera Fugia, with the exception of the fact
Speaker 1: that you you would have to keep your light aircraft
Speaker 1: probably in a hangar somewhere, or you have to have
Speaker 1: a special garage built force to drive your other car
Speaker 1: to that to the air to the airstrip. But you
Speaker 1: still have to have an airstrip to take off with
Speaker 1: that one. So you know, the convenience factor being able
Speaker 1: to drive your airplane home might not be enough for
Speaker 1: you to say I'm willing to spend another hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars on that and hundred thousand plus on that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's expensive. I mean you look at
Speaker 1: that vt O L technology and the vehicles that have
Speaker 1: it are not cheap. Now that the Harrier is a
Speaker 1: little bit different because that's an older aircraft. I mean
Speaker 1: that that was developed in the late fifties and they
Speaker 1: started building them in the sixties. But when you look
Speaker 1: at the Osprey that was that's kind of another one.
Speaker 1: Another reason why it's so um uh controversial in various
Speaker 1: circles is not just for its safety record, which may
Speaker 1: or may not be awful. It all depends upon whom
Speaker 1: you ask, but also because it definitely went over what
Speaker 1: they had projected it would cost. The original projection for
Speaker 1: that program was I think two point five billion dollars,
Speaker 1: not chump change, but it turns out that the whole
Speaker 1: thing is going to be closer to thirty five point
Speaker 1: six billion dollars, which is a big leap. Obviously, every
Speaker 1: single asprey costs around oh between sixty million and seventy
Speaker 1: million dollars every single one, and there's something like four
Speaker 1: d and eight of them that have been ordered to date.
Speaker 1: But they're all full of gold toilets. They're not all
Speaker 1: full of gold toilets. One gold toilet apiece, you're your
Speaker 1: flying car will not need a gold toilet. So no, anyone,
Speaker 1: anyone who sees me in my flying car is going
Speaker 1: to have need of a goal toilet or at least
Speaker 1: a toilet, because that's how I'm gonna fly that sucker.
Speaker 1: Um No. But the point I'm trying to make here
Speaker 1: is that this technology, while while you know, the the
Speaker 1: whole idea behind the osprey was they wanted to have
Speaker 1: a vehicle that could uh could land in remote locations
Speaker 1: without an airstrip that would be act like a helicopter
Speaker 1: whenever it was taking off or landing, but like a
Speaker 1: plane in every other case. And it turned out that
Speaker 1: achieving that ended up being a lot more complicated and
Speaker 1: expensive and dangerous than they had first anticipated. So I
Speaker 1: would imagine that same sort of stuff, even though we've
Speaker 1: learned a lot since then, that it's still going to
Speaker 1: be one of those those technologies that, at least for
Speaker 1: the first few implementations, we're going to see some really
Speaker 1: expensive vehicles, assuming they ever make it to actual manufacturing lines.
Speaker 1: Now Terafugia, for its part, they're saying that they'll be
Speaker 1: available by so it's not that long before we should
Speaker 1: start seeing these, at least in limited production runs, assuming
Speaker 1: that everything goes well. So and I just wonder what
Speaker 1: kind of market there is for it. I mean, i'd like,
Speaker 1: I really don't think that anyone other than people who
Speaker 1: were going to buy a light sport craft anyway are
Speaker 1: going to pick These's about to say, I know some
Speaker 1: I know some people who have pilot's licenses for light aircraft,
Speaker 1: and they also are of a particular tax bracket where
Speaker 1: I could see them picking one of these up. Because
Speaker 1: I grew up in a part of Georgia that had
Speaker 1: a lot of affluent families. I wish I had been
Speaker 1: one of them. No, it's fine, I'm okay now that
Speaker 1: I'm going to get my manual powered flying car. You
Speaker 1: were just turning into a little tyrant today, just imagining
Speaker 1: all of the suffering you'll gleefully inflict in the future.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing that gives people, not
Speaker 1: pilot licenses. Actually, that's that's I think. I think that
Speaker 1: that showing the glee and other people's terror is what
Speaker 1: an f a a doctor you would say, like you're
Speaker 1: not allowed ground check or they talk to all his friends.
Speaker 1: I'm really good at masking that glee when it comes
Speaker 1: down to it. I've never seen you do that, but
Speaker 1: you are an actor, so I can. I can totally
Speaker 1: fake sincerity. It's the first thing they teach you. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: the future is full of excellence and terror. I think.
Speaker 1: I think flying cars, I think are are one of
Speaker 1: those things that if we see them, uh, it'll be
Speaker 1: in a very limited capacity for the foreseeable future. And
Speaker 1: I think for the average consumer, I agree with you guys,
Speaker 1: it's got to be automated. It has to be, because
Speaker 1: if it's not, then it's just it's just I can't
Speaker 1: imagine any company, yeah, taking that on. That's a huge risk, right,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine any insurance company offering up insurance for
Speaker 1: that future without insurance, but none the way you're talking,
Speaker 1: we're talking where you can't get it because no one
Speaker 1: will recover you, not that it doesn't exist. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think uh, I think will be a while before
Speaker 1: we see this. Now, that doesn't mean that maybe maybe
Speaker 1: in that magical twenty to fifty year time frame that
Speaker 1: we always talk about in the show, we finally start
Speaker 1: seeing them. It would be kind of cool. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it would be a neat thing to see. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and these autonomous cars, like we said, have been
Speaker 1: proven themselves to be really safe, so at least on
Speaker 1: a on that level, I can imagine it. I just
Speaker 1: don't know what the time. As far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: the deal with flying cars is, there's not any magic
Speaker 1: element missing. It's just like so many other problems, it's
Speaker 1: just a feasibility and economics problem. And how can you
Speaker 1: make this not cost of ba jillion dollars and not
Speaker 1: you know, super super energy hungry and all those questions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that in a good couple of centuries will
Speaker 1: totally have them. Yeah. It's funny that it only took
Speaker 1: a little more than a decade for someone to first
Speaker 1: propose a flying car, and a century later we're still
Speaker 1: waiting for one to take off. All right, guys, so
Speaker 1: we're wrapping this up now. You know you love the show.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't be listening to the show unless you love
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Speaker 1: videos the podcast like this one. Blog posts articles stuff
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Speaker 1: subjects and we talk about stuff that we haven't even
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