Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech and is time for another
Speaker 1: classic episode of tech Stuff. This one originally published back
Speaker 1: on December two, two thousand thirteen. It is titled Where's
Speaker 1: My Flying Car. I don't know how I resisted the
Speaker 1: urge to title it dude, where's my Flying Car? But
Speaker 1: somehow I did. Anyway, as you may guess, this is
Speaker 1: an episode about flying cars and why ain't they everywhere already?
Speaker 1: Gosh darn it, let's listen in if this is the future,
Speaker 1: Where's my flying car? Where's my jet flying car? Why
Speaker 1: are my meals in pill form? It's because jet packs
Speaker 1: and flying cars are really dangerous. Yeah, they're not practical
Speaker 1: very much, and at least not yet, and they're really
Speaker 1: tricky to do in a way that is safe. You know,
Speaker 1: even if you're talking about completely automating it, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about some cars where they're taking that approach,
Speaker 1: where they're making it as automated as possible, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's there's a lot of logistics to work through. I mean,
Speaker 1: just imagine, like in my neighborhood alone, if I had
Speaker 1: a flying car and it was all automated and everything,
Speaker 1: and it could detect other flying cars, I still have
Speaker 1: to worry about things like power lines. And we don't
Speaker 1: have autonomous cars that go on a two dimensional plane yet.
Speaker 1: So I mean adding that third dimension is more complicated
Speaker 1: than it probably sounds. So the flying car, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously that's been something in science fiction. What might surprise
Speaker 1: you is how old the concept of a flying car is.
Speaker 1: It did not take very long after the invention of
Speaker 1: both cars and planes for someone to say, hey, wouldn't
Speaker 1: it be awesome if a car was also a plane.
Speaker 1: Uh So back in eighteen eighty five, that's when you
Speaker 1: get your first gasoline powered automobile, which was invented by
Speaker 1: a fellow named Carl Friedrich Benz and Mercedes Benz. And
Speaker 1: then in nineteen o three we had the first flight
Speaker 1: of the Right brothers, right, which, depending upon your view
Speaker 1: of history, was the first you know, uh, solid like
Speaker 1: heavier than air flight. Uh. There's definitely some debate there,
Speaker 1: but generally in the historical ranks, generally speaking, people say
Speaker 1: nineteen O three first flight. At any rate, it was
Speaker 1: right around that time. So eighteen eighty five was the
Speaker 1: first gasoline powered automobile. Keep in mind that there were
Speaker 1: other types of automobile, steam powered, electric powered ones, but
Speaker 1: gasolene powered started in the late nineteenth century early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: You get the Right Brothers, So how long did it
Speaker 1: take before someone came up with an idea of making
Speaker 1: up car slash plane? Seventeen fourteen years after the Right
Speaker 1: Brothers flew, someone says, clearly, awesome, two things can be combined, right,
Speaker 1: this is the chocolate and peanut butter of the technological age.
Speaker 1: They must become one. And that person was but Glenn Curtis.
Speaker 1: He created the Curtis auto Plane. Then the names of
Speaker 1: these things, by the way, are my favorite that they
Speaker 1: really only get better. Yeah, it's sort of like what
Speaker 1: you encounter when you when you look at steampunk, where
Speaker 1: people come up with the most creative uh, goofy goofy,
Speaker 1: like like multi collaborate names. So the Curtis auto Plane
Speaker 1: wasn't really a true flying car and what we would
Speaker 1: think of today, right, it didn't look like a car
Speaker 1: that could suddenly take off and you wouldn't he have
Speaker 1: Doc Brown say where we're going, we don't need roads,
Speaker 1: and then you have the big Back to the Future
Speaker 1: music come up. It's it looked more like a plane
Speaker 1: that you could sort of drive around if you needed to. Um.
Speaker 1: So it was a plane, a small plane, relatively small
Speaker 1: plane with a forty foot wingspans about twelve point, thank
Speaker 1: you very much. And it had a rear mounted four
Speaker 1: bladed propellers, so the propellers on the back of the
Speaker 1: plane and so have on the front of it, which
Speaker 1: is fairly common in a lot of the designs will
Speaker 1: be talking about today. Um and uh. But but it
Speaker 1: never really flew, now, it just kind of hopped off
Speaker 1: the ground a couple of times, never really caught flight.
Speaker 1: So if you ever watch any of those kind of
Speaker 1: like a toddler going and flying and started jumping really hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you look at any of those old timey movies
Speaker 1: where people were working on the early early versions of airplanes,
Speaker 1: and you see lots of planes that get a little
Speaker 1: bit off the ground and then immediately come right back down,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what this thing did. It never never
Speaker 1: attained true flight, to be fair. At the time, I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of especially kind of hobbyist created
Speaker 1: planes exactly. We're just you know, we're really just hopping.
Speaker 1: So that probably wasn't terrible for no, for a first
Speaker 1: attempt at making a car that was also a plane.
Speaker 1: Not bad, not great, but not bad. And it would
Speaker 1: take another twenty years before someone would create something similar,
Speaker 1: or at least according to all the research I was doing,
Speaker 1: there probably were other people, hobbyists, mechanics engineers who are
Speaker 1: trying to do the sort of thing, but not all
Speaker 1: of their attempts have been recorded for posterity's sake. But
Speaker 1: in ninety seven, a Waldo Waterman created the aero bile
Speaker 1: or aerobill or aerobilly anyways, it was. It was a
Speaker 1: student baker, which, as we all know from the Muppet
Speaker 1: movie is a bear's natural habitat, so student baker not.
Speaker 1: If you were to look at a picture of a
Speaker 1: student baker, I don't think the first thing that you
Speaker 1: would think is that looks like that sucker could fly
Speaker 1: through the air. And yet Waldo Waterman was determined, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one was that was a three wheeled car, but
Speaker 1: the wheels were detachable. Yeah, well had detachable wheels and
Speaker 1: a rear mounted propeller, and it never ended up getting
Speaker 1: uh sufficient funding. The wings itself were also detachable. That's
Speaker 1: also a very common thing and a lot of these
Speaker 1: early designs where you know, you would take all the
Speaker 1: parts that you didn't need off for it to be
Speaker 1: a car, and then once you got to wherever, them
Speaker 1: in a very large trunk and run. Yeah, or a
Speaker 1: trailer that you would tow behind the car get to
Speaker 1: wherever you're going, Like whatever airstrip you're going to put
Speaker 1: your plane together, Yeah, you'd actually have to assembol it
Speaker 1: and then it would be a plane. So it was,
Speaker 1: which is something that is very worrying for me. I
Speaker 1: have to say, guys, I I personally do not have
Speaker 1: the kind of engineering background to really feel comfortable flying
Speaker 1: in something that I have just built. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: looking into the trailer and you're seeing like three or
Speaker 1: four just random nuts and bolts in there and think
Speaker 1: that's good enough? You know it's because it could be
Speaker 1: like going to Ikea, like you put your furniture together
Speaker 1: and you're like, it's always a few spare bits, and
Speaker 1: you're like, well, you didn't say that we're spare bits,
Speaker 1: But I could have sworn I followed the instructions. Yet
Speaker 1: that was sort of what these early flying cars were
Speaker 1: like too. So really, you're gonna notice while we talk
Speaker 1: about this, so for these early ones, it's going to
Speaker 1: sound more and more like it was a plane that
Speaker 1: converted into a vehicle that could travel on Rhods. That's
Speaker 1: the case for most of these early ones. Robert Edison
Speaker 1: Fulton Jr. A distant relative to another Fulton we talked
Speaker 1: about in how steam engines were Yeah, the steamboat, the
Speaker 1: steamboat Fulton. Yeah, so steamboat Fulton was not He was
Speaker 1: not a direct descendant of Robert Fulton, the steamboat engineer. Uh.
Speaker 1: Robert Fulton, I believe had one son who never had
Speaker 1: any kids, but several daughters. But obviously you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: the last name Fulton through that line, So we're talking
Speaker 1: like a cousin distantly related in that sense. But still
Speaker 1: his dad was a friend to a certain Thomas Edison,
Speaker 1: which is why Edison had had the Edison in his name. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would guess that if it were Robert Nicola Fulton,
Speaker 1: we would all be just fawning over him because of
Speaker 1: Tesla's and I know we both lost some geek cred
Speaker 1: there I think anyway, His version was an aluminum body
Speaker 1: car that had detachable fabric wings to turn it into
Speaker 1: a light plane, and it also had a detachable propeller
Speaker 1: that would serve as propulsion. And they built four prototypes
Speaker 1: but it never went into production. UM and the following year,
Speaker 1: Consolidated Vaulty developed the convert Car, which was a two
Speaker 1: door sedan with detachable airplane unit. So in this case,
Speaker 1: it's like an entire kind of airplane kit that you
Speaker 1: could fit on top of this car. And they had
Speaker 1: some success, at least, well, they had limited early success
Speaker 1: with their with their tests. Didn't think, Yeah, yeah, they
Speaker 1: had two successful tests. Um, they had two successful tests.
Speaker 1: Improved they could they could fly for about an hour
Speaker 1: and travel it around forty five seventy two I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: not forty five. I could travel a total distance of
Speaker 1: forty five miles or seventy two kilometers on a gallon
Speaker 1: of gas. Us. But it was pretty good. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: to flights going pretty slow, but unfortunately the third flight
Speaker 1: not so successful. Yeah, and that that was pretty much
Speaker 1: the end of the project, right. They were trying to
Speaker 1: get some marketing dollars behind it. After the crash that
Speaker 1: was a complete disaster for them, and it was it
Speaker 1: was scrapped. They decided not to go forward with it.
Speaker 1: Molten B. Taylor builds the Arrow Car, which was actually
Speaker 1: inspired by Robert Edison Fulton Junior's design. It also had
Speaker 1: detachable wings and a detachable tail so they could stash
Speaker 1: those in a in a trailer. Yeah, this is one
Speaker 1: of those that you would put all those parts in
Speaker 1: a trailer, tow it to the airport, then take everything out,
Speaker 1: assemble it on the car. And according to the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, a practiced owner could assemble the Erow car
Speaker 1: from into flying form within ten minutes. Ten minutes to
Speaker 1: turn into an airplane. I can't assemble a microwave dinner
Speaker 1: and ten I don't. I certainly anyone who watched me
Speaker 1: play Minecraft knows ten minutes is not enough time for
Speaker 1: me to assemble anything. This was another tail end propeller. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it looks like a mini car and only six
Speaker 1: were ever built. In fact, one of them I think
Speaker 1: was current, was on the market recently for just over
Speaker 1: like a million dollars or something like. It actually looks
Speaker 1: very quaint, like it looks like a quaint little antique
Speaker 1: car that for some reason has had an airplane tail
Speaker 1: merged onto the end of it and wings that sprouted
Speaker 1: out of it. So yeah, but if you, if you,
Speaker 1: you could easily imagine removing those and it would look
Speaker 1: like a little Yeah. So this one was more of
Speaker 1: a car, although again you could not, you know, effortlessly
Speaker 1: convert to flying form, which is really what we're going
Speaker 1: for here, right. We want a car that you could
Speaker 1: drive on the streets and then when traffic is getting
Speaker 1: really badly you put sug button and it transforms like
Speaker 1: in an anime, and it would be a while and
Speaker 1: still would will be a while before we'd see something
Speaker 1: like that. Uh So, nineteen sixty, Paul Mahler introduces the
Speaker 1: x M two. Now Maller will be well, we'll go
Speaker 1: ahead and tell Mahler's story. It's kind of a disappointing story.
Speaker 1: But the x M two was the first prototype of
Speaker 1: his sky car concept that one would hover, but he
Speaker 1: couldn't get it to fly. So he would continue to
Speaker 1: to kind of refine this design, and in nine was
Speaker 1: the first one. Nine he introduces the M two hundred X,
Speaker 1: which could fly in an altitude of about fifteen meters
Speaker 1: or around fifty feet, and then he would later introduce
Speaker 1: the sky car M four hundred, which is a vertical
Speaker 1: takeoff and landing aircraft vt o L vertical takeoff or
Speaker 1: landing really, which could reach speeds theoretically of four hundred
Speaker 1: miles per hour or six hundred forty four kilometers power.
Speaker 1: But the cruising speed. Yeah, can you imagine your average
Speaker 1: motorists controlling a vehicle traveling traveling at that speed, I
Speaker 1: literally cannot have the cruising speed. Now that was the
Speaker 1: top speed. The cruising speed was three miles per Oh,
Speaker 1: well that's much better, yeah, or five hundred sixty three
Speaker 1: kilometers per hour. Fuel for the vehicle included simple simple
Speaker 1: household items yasolene was one diesel okay, alcohol okay, kerosene
Speaker 1: and propane all at the same time. Yeah. Well it's
Speaker 1: you know, because it was using some pretty powerful sure
Speaker 1: which which also yeah, exactly, the average voters just has
Speaker 1: those lying around all right, exactly. You know, you can
Speaker 1: just go to one filling station and find all of those.
Speaker 1: Some filling stations you might, but not many had a
Speaker 1: range of about nine hundred miles, which is about hundred
Speaker 1: fifty kilometers. Is that the same as it's car mode range.
Speaker 1: Uh no, no, it's Kira mode at a mileage of
Speaker 1: twenty miles per gallon or thirty two point two kilometers
Speaker 1: per gallon. I know, really usually do leaders per kilometer,
Speaker 1: but there's only so much conversion I can do. Guys,
Speaker 1: I have to apologize for my American nous. But the
Speaker 1: initial price for the M four hundred was quoted to
Speaker 1: be a millions Macarou's one million bucks. But the promises
Speaker 1: of Muller never quite panned out. So in two thousand
Speaker 1: three they did a demonstration where the M four hundred hovered,
Speaker 1: but it hovered on a tether like it was tethered
Speaker 1: to the ground. It did not fly. Um, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't really awe inspiring or giving a lot of people
Speaker 1: confidence in the project. And in fact, by two thousand
Speaker 1: nine they still didn't have a flying car to show off,
Speaker 1: and Maller ended up filing for personal protection under Chapter
Speaker 1: eleven as in bankruptcy. Turned out apparently the company had
Speaker 1: spent something like one hundred million dollars over forty years
Speaker 1: trying to get this flying car designed to work, and
Speaker 1: it had not happened hundred million bucks. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was definitely a tough, tough story. Now, Maller, while he
Speaker 1: filed for protection under Chapter eleven, the company, Maller International
Speaker 1: is still from why I understand, still operating in a
Speaker 1: very limited capacity. So the company didn't go away, but
Speaker 1: Maller certainly had to look for some financial protection after
Speaker 1: after just not being able to turn this around. Now
Speaker 1: that leads us up to the last one we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about before our break. Uh. It dates back
Speaker 1: to two thousand one, the Skywriter X two R. So
Speaker 1: this one is designed by Macro Industries Incorporated, and it's
Speaker 1: another VT O L type of vehicle, and this one
Speaker 1: uses ducted fans as propulsion instead of propellers. So, uh,
Speaker 1: it kind of looks like like a casual glance, you
Speaker 1: would look and say, oh, those are turbines, but they're
Speaker 1: not actually turbines. So it's around casing. On the inside
Speaker 1: of this casing is a fan blade and those fans
Speaker 1: turn and provide the lift, and you can tilt the
Speaker 1: ducts in different directions so that you can do the
Speaker 1: vertical takeoff and landing, or tilt them forward so that
Speaker 1: you get that forward propulsion like I like a hover carrier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a little hover carrier thing. According to the website,
Speaker 1: they were the car would have lots of dynamic routing information,
Speaker 1: so it would allow it to plan out a route
Speaker 1: that would keep it clear from the pathway of other
Speaker 1: flying car motorists, because they actually said their goal is
Speaker 1: to make the flying car reality for the average consumer.
Speaker 1: But of course, you know, to you and I, we
Speaker 1: just sit there and think about Atlanta traffic right now.
Speaker 1: Just imagine the traffic that's passing past our building right now.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you guys can hear it. I know you can
Speaker 1: well imagine all of that traffic in the air. That's
Speaker 1: kind of terrifying, completely terrifying. Although by two thousand one,
Speaker 1: certainly we were starting to get into computer systems that
Speaker 1: would at least help you detect some of that little right.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that it would have a lot
Speaker 1: of automated systems to help prevent collisions, to help you
Speaker 1: plan a flight path that wouldn't put you across someone
Speaker 1: else's flight path. Uh, you know, And of course as
Speaker 1: technology has advanced, we've got better with like collision detection
Speaker 1: and prevention, that kind of stuff. Automated systems that can
Speaker 1: take over in case a manual accident is about to happen.
Speaker 1: So things have gotten to the point where you could
Speaker 1: kind of see a reality here, but it's one that's
Speaker 1: kind of early. Yeah yeah, And you know, I I
Speaker 1: heard a little bit about this and it sounds like
Speaker 1: a kind of solid plan. Where did did this one
Speaker 1: actually happen? They said that the first models of this
Speaker 1: car would be available within five years the project receiving
Speaker 1: adequate funding. As far as they can tell, the project
Speaker 1: has yet to receive what they call adequate funding, So uh,
Speaker 1: that five years is kind of the perpetual five years
Speaker 1: off from now, just like most technological advances are ten
Speaker 1: to forty years away, and it's it's always gonna yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe they'll end up getting enough funding where they'll become
Speaker 1: a real player in the space, but as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, it's kind of one of those vaporware
Speaker 1: type things. And was this another one that was more
Speaker 1: more like an aircraft that drives than a Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it looks more like a plane than it
Speaker 1: does a car. It looks like it looks like a
Speaker 1: plane that's small enough when everything folds up for it
Speaker 1: to fit into your garage, as opposed to a car
Speaker 1: that can turn into a flying machine. It looks like
Speaker 1: a plane that can be driven on the roads right, right,
Speaker 1: and not the kind of thing that you'd expect to
Speaker 1: take out onto the highways and drive around in traffic. Right. Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: it's Jonathan from twenty. I apologize for my hovering. That's
Speaker 1: a flying card joke. But we need to take a
Speaker 1: quick break, all right, So we're back now. The next
Speaker 1: car on our list is one of my favorites because
Speaker 1: it's so different from all the other ones we've been
Speaker 1: mentioning so far. Like all the ones we've talked about
Speaker 1: either had some sort of VT O L system where
Speaker 1: they were going to hover and take off and then
Speaker 1: fly forward, right, which I'm actually kind of impressed by.
Speaker 1: I think that that a vto L would be a
Speaker 1: little bit more difficult to engineer, and therefore, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: got some challenges, but it would assume you could get
Speaker 1: it to work, it would be way easier for your
Speaker 1: average driver, right, because it wouldn't mean that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to go find a long strap in air strips
Speaker 1: so that you could get up to enough speed to
Speaker 1: get lift and then take off. This would allow you
Speaker 1: to convenient Yeah, Yeah, you're at a standstill, you lift up,
Speaker 1: you fly off where you want to go. And I
Speaker 1: think you need to be at a standstill with some
Speaker 1: you know, like hundred feet of clear space around you
Speaker 1: so that you didn't you know, destroy your surrounding. My
Speaker 1: precision is amazing. I am fully confident I could take
Speaker 1: off from like a crowded parking lot with tiny scratches. Maybe.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about now the Parajet skycr and the
Speaker 1: Parajet skycar is one of my favorites. Parajet, you kind
Speaker 1: of get the feeling here. There's a para sail or
Speaker 1: a parachute that is attached to essentially a dune buggy.
Speaker 1: So it looks like something that came out out of
Speaker 1: Mad Max, right, like, you know, you could take this
Speaker 1: to the Thunderdome in style and um, and it has
Speaker 1: this para sale that you can deploy, and on the
Speaker 1: very back of the dune buggy is an enormous fan.
Speaker 1: So it looks a lot like like like one of
Speaker 1: those everglades and boat boats and the kind of archer likes,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly would be one of those. So it's the
Speaker 1: stune buggy with the fan on the back. And the
Speaker 1: parasale that you deploy, And the way it works is
Speaker 1: that you would if you wanted to actually fly, you
Speaker 1: would take the parasale part out, lay it behind the car,
Speaker 1: start up your fan, and then start driving and once
Speaker 1: you hit about thirty seven miles per hour or sixty
Speaker 1: kilometers per hour, you would have enough lift there from
Speaker 1: the para sale to lift off the ground and use
Speaker 1: the fan to control your pitch and your role. That
Speaker 1: sounds so terrifying but wonderful. The videos of this thing
Speaker 1: I absolutely adore. Now, granted again you don't have any wings,
Speaker 1: so it's not like a you know, air lane slash car.
Speaker 1: This is a car that has a pair of sale
Speaker 1: and a propeller on it. That's pretty much what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. And it sounds like it would still count
Speaker 1: as a as a light sport vehicle. Yes, yes, you
Speaker 1: would have to have sport aircraft. You have to have
Speaker 1: a light sport aircraft piloting license to to be able
Speaker 1: to fly this legally. Obviously there in fact, a lot
Speaker 1: of the ones we're going to talk about, the earlier
Speaker 1: ones we were talking about, never really got beyond prototype
Speaker 1: or concept, so it was kind of right, right, they
Speaker 1: never had to think about this kind of thing. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that the regulations of the f a A
Speaker 1: were a lot lighter when the f A didn't exist,
Speaker 1: so there's some probably helped. The next one we'll talk
Speaker 1: about has kind of a very uh lase attitude about
Speaker 1: air regulations, but I'll mention that when we get into it.
Speaker 1: So this one, you would actually have to have a
Speaker 1: pilot's license to operate in flying mode, but a sport
Speaker 1: pilot license, which I believe it's a little different from it.
Speaker 1: They are different classes, just like there are different classes
Speaker 1: of motorist licenses, there are different classes of pilot licenses, right,
Speaker 1: And since a light sport aircraft is I think you
Speaker 1: have visual site rules on that one, so it's right,
Speaker 1: and it's small enough, it can only be a one
Speaker 1: or two seater just the pilot and up to one passenger.
Speaker 1: You know, max weight of like six which is one thousand,
Speaker 1: three twenty pounds, and a max speed of a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty nuts, which is like a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: eight miles per hour or two d and two kilometers
Speaker 1: per hour. So it's going relatively by the speed of
Speaker 1: planes slow, right, and so all you really need is
Speaker 1: a driver's license and a this this sport pilot certifications.
Speaker 1: You don't need the full medical thing where a doctor
Speaker 1: approved by the f A comes out and says like, yes,
Speaker 1: you are mentally and physically fit to pilot. Right, you
Speaker 1: can be as unstable as you like as long as
Speaker 1: you don't because the damage that you'll create a few
Speaker 1: crash is relatively small. The Parajet skycar, it's top speed
Speaker 1: is well within those parameters. Is that a hundred fifteen
Speaker 1: miles per hour or about a hundred eighty five kilometers
Speaker 1: per hour on the ground. In the scare, it's fifty
Speaker 1: five miles per hour or nine kilometers per hour. And
Speaker 1: that's not a big surprise. You're flying by para sale.
Speaker 1: It's not like not like like you got a turbojet.
Speaker 1: A gallon of gas will take it about fifty six
Speaker 1: point five miles on the ground or two hundred nautical
Speaker 1: miles in the sky. And it costs one hundred nineteen
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for a dune buggy, which is high for
Speaker 1: a dune bug gam sure, but it's approximately average for
Speaker 1: light sport. So this, when you think about this, this
Speaker 1: you know, first you say Oh, this is kind of
Speaker 1: a weird thing for people to spend money on, but
Speaker 1: it's actually something that has been used for first responders
Speaker 1: and disasters. They've used them to get medicine to remote
Speaker 1: locations because you can fly it and then land it
Speaker 1: and then drive over rough terrain because it's a dune bugge.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you can get to places that might need
Speaker 1: medical relief or other disaster relief. And it's actually become
Speaker 1: a useful tool. So while we kind of laugh about
Speaker 1: some of these designs because they're either impractical or they
Speaker 1: they're crazy extravagant, this one actually had a practical use.
Speaker 1: We will return to this classic episode about Where's my
Speaker 1: Flying Car in just a moment, but first let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. That's more than I can say for
Speaker 1: the pal V one, which is a three wheeled vehicle
Speaker 1: that converts into a gyrocopter. I I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. I want one of these right now. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it looks like a have you ever seen the
Speaker 1: Mono tracer? You might not have. There's actually one in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and I think they only ever made something like seventy
Speaker 1: of them. I do not believe that I have seen it.
Speaker 1: Have you seen tron? Do you know what the light
Speaker 1: cycle and tron looks like? That's all right, that's a
Speaker 1: mono tracer and if you just make a couple of adjustments,
Speaker 1: that's essentially what the pal v one looks like. But
Speaker 1: instead of two wheels, it's step three. It's got two
Speaker 1: in the back, one in the front. It handles like
Speaker 1: a motorcycle, and the gyrocopter rotor folds down and the
Speaker 1: tail folds in to make it a pretty compact vehicle.
Speaker 1: So when you decide that you want to go flying around,
Speaker 1: you drive it over to an airport, you unfold the
Speaker 1: rotor and the tail, and then once the road gets going,
Speaker 1: it's self propelling. Relates a gyrocopter will have to do
Speaker 1: a whole episode on how gyrocopters were, absolutely, but it
Speaker 1: can then do a you know, a vertical takeoff because
Speaker 1: it's just like any other gyrocopter and you can fly
Speaker 1: it around. And this is where the blase attitude comes in.
Speaker 1: They say, like, you know, it's designed to fly around
Speaker 1: or below four thousand feet, which is about which that's
Speaker 1: under the visual flight rules traffic, meaning you don't have
Speaker 1: to have lots of instruments you can. You can fly
Speaker 1: by sight, right, your cabin doesn't have to be pressurized
Speaker 1: at that at that height, and you're not really going
Speaker 1: to be interfering with commercial Yeah, and they essentially say that,
Speaker 1: you know, at that height, the government doesn't really care,
Speaker 1: so have fun. That's essentially what the messages. I'm not
Speaker 1: if that is accurate. I think that there's a problem.
Speaker 1: It's kind of terrifying. Really. It can reach top speeds
Speaker 1: of a hundred twelve miles prour or KOs prower on
Speaker 1: land or in the air. So uh yeah, terrifying no
Speaker 1: matter how you put it. But it looks awesome. I
Speaker 1: mean the pictures and everything the video is is really
Speaker 1: it's a ton of fun. So they have made prototypes.
Speaker 1: These exist, Yeah, you could get one of these. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then there's the aero Mobile V two point five, which
Speaker 1: is another propeller driven aircraft that also acts as a car,
Speaker 1: so really plane first, car second as a car. The
Speaker 1: wings for this aircraft fold back along the fuselage, so
Speaker 1: it's not detachable. They actually fold and they create this
Speaker 1: kind of funky elongated car body. Because the wings are
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily short, so the whole car is a
Speaker 1: long car and The very back of the car is
Speaker 1: also kind of funky. It has this sort of uh,
Speaker 1: these tail fins that pop out of the back, so
Speaker 1: the tail of the aircraft think of like a horizontal
Speaker 1: tail with two verb cool tail fins that pop up
Speaker 1: directly under those tail fins are the rear wheels for
Speaker 1: the Aero Mobile two point five. So what you're saying
Speaker 1: is that if you drop your middle school or off
Speaker 1: in this car, they're gonna make their there. They're gonna
Speaker 1: get a lot of wedgies. Possibly they're either going to
Speaker 1: be told that they have the coolest parent ever, or
Speaker 1: they're going to be ostracized for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: It's middle school. That's kind of how it goes. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, really, if it weren't that, it'd
Speaker 1: be something else. Um there. This one has a double
Speaker 1: steering wheel, which I thought was really cool. The outer
Speaker 1: steering wheel is designed to drive the car and the
Speaker 1: inter steering wheel is designed to drive it when it's
Speaker 1: in the air. So it's a steering wheel, not a
Speaker 1: not a joystick for the air travel exactly. And it's
Speaker 1: you know, I guess too. To conserve space, they built
Speaker 1: two in one. Um I don't. I haven't seen pictures
Speaker 1: of how this looks, so I don't know exactly, Like
Speaker 1: if the second one, the one in the middle, if
Speaker 1: it projects out a little bit, I would imagine when
Speaker 1: I have to. Otherwise I can't. I can't see how
Speaker 1: you would be able to manipulate it. But the description
Speaker 1: I thought was really interesting. And you just you push
Speaker 1: a button to go into aircraft mode and that makes
Speaker 1: the wings unfold and they lock into aircraft position. And
Speaker 1: you would have to do this at an airport. This
Speaker 1: is one of those those cars where you would have
Speaker 1: to drive it to an airport, get on the landing strip,
Speaker 1: unfolded wings until they're locked into place, and then you
Speaker 1: could drive until you reach liftoff speed and take off.
Speaker 1: So you couldn't just do this on the street. That
Speaker 1: would be bad um. And it has a top speed
Speaker 1: of a hundred and twenty four miles per hour or
Speaker 1: two hundred kilometers per hour when it's an airplane mode,
Speaker 1: and has a range of about four d thirty miles
Speaker 1: or seven kilometers and according to the designer, who is
Speaker 1: Stefan Kleine. Stefan says that you can refuel this at
Speaker 1: any standard gas station which suggests that it is actually
Speaker 1: using regular gasoline or diesel, one of the two. It's
Speaker 1: not using any kind of airplane fuel. Automotive fuel is
Speaker 1: becoming for especially for these small sport craft, a more
Speaker 1: popular choice from what I've been reading right now. This
Speaker 1: one has not yet been certified by the government, but
Speaker 1: we imagine that it would probably fall under the same
Speaker 1: certification as other UH flying cars have under the light
Speaker 1: sport aircraft designation, So uh this would also be another
Speaker 1: one where you would have to have that pilot license
Speaker 1: or to operate it. The wingspan on this thing is
Speaker 1: twenty seven feet wide or eight point two meters, which
Speaker 1: is why I say it's an aircraft first in a
Speaker 1: car second, because you know, at twenty seven feet when
Speaker 1: you fold that back, that means that car has to
Speaker 1: be pretty long. It's it does not look like a car.
Speaker 1: Like you. You look at this and you think, I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is, but it's not a car.
Speaker 1: It sounds like not that many of these that we've
Speaker 1: been talking about would look like cars in any kind
Speaker 1: of yeah, this car shape. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: these would go to amateur pilots who have a lot
Speaker 1: of income. Pretty typical of amateur pilots anyway, because it's
Speaker 1: expensive to be a pilot. Oh sure, sure, but you know,
Speaker 1: and and there there is a problem of many of
Speaker 1: the public airports that you can land in. Once you
Speaker 1: land there, there's no public transportation that goes out of
Speaker 1: them there. They're too small to have even like a
Speaker 1: taxi stand or something like that. So so you need
Speaker 1: to and it can be a pain if you if
Speaker 1: you fly your plane somewhere and you want to immediately
Speaker 1: go elsewhere. Therefore, this thing that you could drive on
Speaker 1: the ground as well as in the air, bass more
Speaker 1: expensive than any other thing you could speaking of. More
Speaker 1: expensive actually you have. All right, So here's the grand
Speaker 1: daddy of flying cars. This is the one that's been
Speaker 1: the news recently, right, Yeah, the Terrafugia UM trans transition. Yes,
Speaker 1: why do I always forget that word? It's really it's
Speaker 1: a transition. It's it's kind of built for a purpose
Speaker 1: of transitioning from car to airplane airplane. Uh yeah. The
Speaker 1: Terrafugia tagline is we are driven to fly, which apparently
Speaker 1: I wrote the tagline. Someone there is very like minded
Speaker 1: to you that that's terrifying. UM. Their their first model
Speaker 1: This transition has been in development for seven years. As
Speaker 1: of flight testing finally occurred in UM they are taking
Speaker 1: pre orders. Uh wow, how much is it? Uh? Two
Speaker 1: dollars I got chick my account, which you know is
Speaker 1: high for a car. Um, it's actually really high for
Speaker 1: a plane as well. The first car that's also a plane,
Speaker 1: it's a steel Seeing as how your choices are so limited,
Speaker 1: and that's almost entire I think that every single one
Speaker 1: that we've talked about has has projected a lower price
Speaker 1: than that's one. Um. But okay, so so this is
Speaker 1: a this is a two seater street legal airplane that
Speaker 1: converts between driving mode and flying mode in supposedly under
Speaker 1: a minute. And it's a it's another press of button.
Speaker 1: It doesn't kind of thing. Um. Yeah, it would fit
Speaker 1: into a standard single car garage. UM has a full
Speaker 1: vehicle parachute in case anything terrible happens at above five feet.
Speaker 1: Very important, yes, and supposedly meets the federal motor vehicle
Speaker 1: stand safety standards that have been put forth by the
Speaker 1: uh National Highway Traffic and Safety Administrations. So that's that's
Speaker 1: something else that we have to talk about. I mean
Speaker 1: the fact that these vehicles have to meet two different
Speaker 1: sets of standards, right, they have to meet as certain
Speaker 1: set standards by the f a A and another one
Speaker 1: by by the highway. You know, they have to be
Speaker 1: both safe as cars and safe as aircraft. And that
Speaker 1: is that is a lot of safety stuff to talk about,
Speaker 1: which I think is one of the reasons why none
Speaker 1: of none of this has come out of prototype, particularly yet,
Speaker 1: especially not for consumer purchase. Now, when would these things
Speaker 1: be available? Like, are we talking ten years? Uh, they've
Speaker 1: they've they haven't really projected a date that I've seen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw someone saying that it might be in as
Speaker 1: few as two years, which means by theoretically these things
Speaker 1: could be available. And again, because it would be a
Speaker 1: light sport aircraft, you would have to have a pilot's
Speaker 1: license to operate it, so I assume you would also
Speaker 1: have to drive this thing out to an airport, just
Speaker 1: like some of the other ones we've talked about. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly the gig for this sort of thing. Um, well,
Speaker 1: that that means that it's not going to be something
Speaker 1: that's going to absolutely fill the skies as soon as
Speaker 1: it rolls off the production line. No, this is also
Speaker 1: way more of a drivable aircraft than it is a
Speaker 1: flying flying car. Um, well, who's going to make a
Speaker 1: flying car, Lauren, I want my flying car? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: you know this, this this thing is actually pretty clever. Um.
Speaker 1: The the engine is a is a very popular light
Speaker 1: sport aircraft engine. It's called a rod Tex nine twelve.
Speaker 1: I s um at least I assume that is that
Speaker 1: is precisely how you say that, because I don't know
Speaker 1: all that much about plane engines. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: is a weird talk. It really is. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is an engine that's really being lauded for its fuel
Speaker 1: economy and has a whole lot of onboard computers to
Speaker 1: run all kinds of terrific diagnostics for you that that
Speaker 1: are going to read out in a way that's useful
Speaker 1: even if you're not an engineer. So, so it's a
Speaker 1: So it's a pretty cool engine. And they're they're talking
Speaker 1: about I mean, okay when they say that it fits
Speaker 1: in a standard single car garage, where we're talking about
Speaker 1: a seventy eight inch or two meter tall vehicle with
Speaker 1: a eight meter twenty six ft wingspan and six m
Speaker 1: or nineteen ft length. Um, if you want to compare
Speaker 1: that to say, like a camera. Um, you're you're talking
Speaker 1: about a little bit taller about half meter inches not
Speaker 1: not half a meter one point five ms. I was
Speaker 1: thinking half a meter shorter, and then words didn't happen.
Speaker 1: That's significantly shorter, alright. So it's shorter than the camera
Speaker 1: is shorter than the camera is shorter, but it's it's
Speaker 1: just about as long like a hundred and eighty nine
Speaker 1: inches or five meters is what you're talking So on
Speaker 1: a wingspan on a camera, it's about seventy two inches. Wow, man,
Speaker 1: I have been out of the car game for too long. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as it turns out, you know, this is
Speaker 1: this is another one of those propeller based aircraft right
Speaker 1: right right, it's it's a real propeller and um, and
Speaker 1: you know it's what's interesting to me is that they're
Speaker 1: using this single engine to to go back and forth,
Speaker 1: you know, to to switch back and forth between powering
Speaker 1: the car and powering the plane. Yeah. Well that's really
Speaker 1: cool that you've got this one engine that can do
Speaker 1: two very different jobs in the same vehicle. The fact
Speaker 1: that it's turning a propeller and then can switch to
Speaker 1: this other completely different drive train and control the car,
Speaker 1: you know, give the car the propulsion it needs to
Speaker 1: drive around. That's engineering. Feats like that that I think
Speaker 1: are really really interesting. Even if the vehicle itself is
Speaker 1: never a success commercially, the fact that that was an
Speaker 1: innovation is really cool. Yeah. So the question I have
Speaker 1: for you, Lauren, is anyone working on like a prototype
Speaker 1: that the average driver could use to fly around? Not
Speaker 1: someone who you know has trained as a pilot, but
Speaker 1: someone who would just maybe a couple of hours, could
Speaker 1: figure out how to operate this thing. Okay? Well, strangely
Speaker 1: enough that that same company, Tara Fugia, is working on
Speaker 1: the t f X, which is a four seat hybrid
Speaker 1: flying car. Okay, and and and part part of my
Speaker 1: problem with this I'm going to say right off, is
Speaker 1: that this could not qualify as a light sport vehicle.
Speaker 1: You would need an actual pilot license in order to
Speaker 1: drive this because it contains a because you can carry
Speaker 1: more than two people. Right. Also, from what I understand,
Speaker 1: has not only propellers, which are used for vertical takeoff
Speaker 1: and landing, so in other words, they pivot right where
Speaker 1: they would pivot up, and they the propellers themselves fold
Speaker 1: in on the pods that they are mounted on, So
Speaker 1: then the pods would move up to vertical position, the
Speaker 1: the blades would fold out, they would start to rotate,
Speaker 1: you would gain altitude. They would then start tilting forward,
Speaker 1: so you'd start going forward, and then it switches over
Speaker 1: to from why I understand horsepower engine that provides thrust. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that rotex I was talking about is like a
Speaker 1: hundred horsepower engine. Yeah, which is a little bit more reasonable.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's going to take you up to that
Speaker 1: like hundred and twenty so mile per hour kind of
Speaker 1: range that we were talking about earlier. That seems reasonable
Speaker 1: for your average driver to handle, right, a three horsepower
Speaker 1: engine for cruising, it says, I guess what it means
Speaker 1: is that once you get up to a particular speed,
Speaker 1: this engine would would switch over and you would move
Speaker 1: much faster. Now. The proposal, from what I understand, also
Speaker 1: involves lots of automation, to the point where practically everything
Speaker 1: would be handled in the air by essentially autopilot, right,
Speaker 1: you know, to the to the point that if the
Speaker 1: computer decides that a route that you have chosen is
Speaker 1: dangerous or that you are flying into undesirable territory that
Speaker 1: it would declare an emergency to authorities on your behalf right,
Speaker 1: and it would force you to go and land at
Speaker 1: an airport. Yes, so yeah, this thing. But this thing,
Speaker 1: because it has the VTOL approach, means that theoretically you
Speaker 1: could take off from any location, not just in airports, right,
Speaker 1: as long as you've got that level clearing of about
Speaker 1: a hundred feet, which is right. So it's they are
Speaker 1: supposedly working on this. They pretty much have this just
Speaker 1: in constant drawing us. Yeah, they've they've got some shiny
Speaker 1: computer animations of it. They said that there would be
Speaker 1: something like eight or twelve eight to twelve years of
Speaker 1: testing before this would ever become an actual thing, So
Speaker 1: we are a good ways out from seeing this if
Speaker 1: it ever in fact becomes real reality. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of that's going to depend upon the success or
Speaker 1: failure of the transition UM. If that ends up being
Speaker 1: a success, that makes it more likely that they'll be
Speaker 1: able to do more development on the t FX. I
Speaker 1: honestly don't know what to think about this. I I
Speaker 1: you know, granted, when I was a kid, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been able to imagine a car that could take
Speaker 1: you door to door without you ever touching the wheel.
Speaker 1: And yet now we're starting to see cars in the
Speaker 1: prototype stage at various companies like Google and other and
Speaker 1: like actual car manufacturing companies too, so we're starting to
Speaker 1: see that, So maybe it's possible. It's just I think
Speaker 1: that flying is way more complicated than driving. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's the thing. I mean, I really don't think that,
Speaker 1: you know, all that autonomous car stuff is complicated enough
Speaker 1: as it stands. We just did a whole episode of
Speaker 1: Run Forward thinking about it, and so so check that
Speaker 1: out if you if you want to get a full
Speaker 1: breakdown of how difficult this problem really is. Although certainly, yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of companies are working on it, but I don't,
Speaker 1: you know, between that and the fact that so many
Speaker 1: regulations and and laws would have to be in place
Speaker 1: in order for this to be a reality, And all
Speaker 1: I would take is maybe one really bad publicity, like
Speaker 1: like accident, even if no one was hurt, That's all
Speaker 1: I would take for it to essentially ground everybody. So uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't want to be doom and gloom about
Speaker 1: it because I think that especially these these drivable planes
Speaker 1: are a really interesting concept and I really hope that
Speaker 1: a couple of these companies make some consumer level ones
Speaker 1: for the next couple of years. Even if you know,
Speaker 1: two seventy dollars, it's not something that this personal consumer
Speaker 1: is ready to drop on anything. Um but but yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's that that single engine clever idea
Speaker 1: is is pretty awesome, and and having something that lightweight
Speaker 1: that that you're still comfortable driving is is pretty rad
Speaker 1: I you know, I am skeptical but hopeful. Let me
Speaker 1: put it that way, like, if it never happens, I
Speaker 1: won't be surprised. If it does happen, I fully expect that,
Speaker 1: you know, for it to get cleared, it's going to
Speaker 1: have to be the best of the best technology out there.
Speaker 1: So hopefully we will see this within our lifetimes, in
Speaker 1: that ten to forty years years. Absolutely, But you know,
Speaker 1: if we don't, then I'm sure we'll figure out how
Speaker 1: to get around traffic some other way. And that wraps
Speaker 1: up this classic episode of tech Stuff. I hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions about topics
Speaker 1: I should cover in tech Stuff, please let me know.
Speaker 1: You can reach out via Twitter. The handle is tech
Speaker 1: stuff h S. W and I'll talk to you again
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