Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from half
Speaker 1: Stuff either everyone, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland and I'm Lauren both of them. And boy, these
Speaker 1: podcasts just fly by, and today we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: flying cars. I was wondering if I could get a
Speaker 1: chuckle I was getting, I was getting the grin, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I tried try not to encourage him. Guys, it's
Speaker 1: too late. It's I have well passed the age where
Speaker 1: that can ever be changed. So we really did want
Speaker 1: to talk about flying cars. It's one of those subjects
Speaker 1: I can't believe we haven't really talked about on tech
Speaker 1: stuff before. But it's one of those things that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the typical if this is the future, where's my
Speaker 1: flying car? Where's my jet pack and flying car? Why
Speaker 1: aren't 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 uh, they're
Speaker 1: really tricky to do in a way that is safe,
Speaker 1: you know, even if you're talking about completely automating it.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk about some cars where they're taking
Speaker 1: that approach where they're making it as automated as possible.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's there's a lot of logistics to
Speaker 1: work through. I mean just imagine, like in my neighborhood alone,
Speaker 1: if I had a flying car and it was all
Speaker 1: automated and everything and it could detect other flying cars,
Speaker 1: I still have to worry about things like power lines.
Speaker 1: And we don't have autonomous cars that go on a
Speaker 1: two dimensional plane yet, So I mean adding that third
Speaker 1: dimension is more complicated than it probably sounds. So the
Speaker 1: flying car, I mean, obviously that's been something in science fiction.
Speaker 1: What might surprise you is how old the concept of
Speaker 1: a flying car is. It did not take very long
Speaker 1: after the invention of both cars and planes for someone
Speaker 1: to say, hey, wouldn't it be awesome if a car
Speaker 1: was also a plane. So back in eighteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: that's when you get your first gasoline powered automobile, which
Speaker 1: was invented by a fellow named Carl Friedrich Benz and
Speaker 1: Mercedes Benz. And then in nineteen o three we had
Speaker 1: the first flight of the Wright brothers, right, which, depending
Speaker 1: upon your view of history, was the first you know, uh,
Speaker 1: solid like heavier than air flight. Uh, there's definitely some
Speaker 1: debate there, but in the historical ranks, generally speaking, people
Speaker 1: say n first flight. At any rate, it was right
Speaker 1: around that time. So e eighty five was the first
Speaker 1: gasoline powered automobile. Keep in mind that there were other
Speaker 1: types of automobile, steam powered, electric powered ones, but gasoline
Speaker 1: 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, 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 in 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 you very much.
Speaker 1: And it had a rear mounted four bladed propellers, so
Speaker 1: the propellers on the back of the plane and so
Speaker 1: have on the front of it, which is fairly common
Speaker 1: in a lot of the designs we'll be talking about today.
Speaker 1: Um and uh. But but it never really flew, now,
Speaker 1: it just kind of hopped off the ground a couple
Speaker 1: of times, never really caught flights. So if you ever
Speaker 1: watch any of those kind of like a toddler going
Speaker 1: and flying and they started jumping really hard. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you look at any of those old timey movies where
Speaker 1: 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: 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 seven Waldo Waterman created the aerobile or aerobill or
Speaker 1: aerobilly anyways, it was. It was a student baker, which,
Speaker 1: as we all know from the Muppet movie is a
Speaker 1: bear's natural habitat, so student aker not. If you were
Speaker 1: to look at a picture of a student baker, I
Speaker 1: don't think the first thing that you would think is
Speaker 1: that looks like that sucker could fly through the air.
Speaker 1: And yet Waldo Waterman was determined, Yeah, this one was
Speaker 1: that was a three wheeled car, but the wheels were detachable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I had detachable wheels and a rear mounted propeller,
Speaker 1: and it never ended up getting uh sufficient funding. The
Speaker 1: wings itself were also detachable. That's also a very common
Speaker 1: thing and a lot of these early designs where you know,
Speaker 1: you would take all the parts that you didn't need
Speaker 1: off for it to be a car, and then once
Speaker 1: you got to wherever, them in a very large trunk
Speaker 1: and run. Yeah, or a trailer that you would tow
Speaker 1: behind the car get to wherever you're going, like whatever
Speaker 1: airstrip you're going to put your plane together, Yeah, you'd
Speaker 1: actually have to assembol it and then it would be
Speaker 1: a plane. So it was, which is something that is
Speaker 1: very worrying for me. I have to say, guys, I
Speaker 1: I personally do not have the kind of engineering background
Speaker 1: to really feel comfortable flying in something that I have
Speaker 1: just built. Can you imagine looking into the trailer and
Speaker 1: you're seeing like three or four just random nuts and
Speaker 1: bolts in there and think that's good enough? Uh? You
Speaker 1: know it's because it could be like going to Ikea,
Speaker 1: Like you put your furniture together and you're like, it's
Speaker 1: always a few spare bits, and you're like, well, you
Speaker 1: didn't say there were spare bits, but I could have
Speaker 1: sworn I followed the instructions. Yet that was sort of
Speaker 1: what these early flying cars were like too. So really,
Speaker 1: you're gonna notice while we talk about this, for these
Speaker 1: early ones, it's going to sound more and more like
Speaker 1: it was a plane that could bend into a vehicle
Speaker 1: that could travel on Rhods. That's the case for most
Speaker 1: of these early ones. Robert Edison Fulton Jr. A distant
Speaker 1: relative to another Fulton. We talked about in how steam
Speaker 1: engines were the steamboat the steamboat Fulton. Yeah, so steamboat
Speaker 1: Fulton was not. He was not a direct descendant of
Speaker 1: Robert Fulton, the steamboat engineer. Uh. Robert Fulton, I believe
Speaker 1: had one son who never had any kids, but several daughters.
Speaker 1: But obviously you wouldn't have last name Fulton through that line,
Speaker 1: So we're talking like a cousin distantly related in that sense.
Speaker 1: But still his dad was a friend to a certain
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison, which is why ed had had the Edison
Speaker 1: in his name. Um, yeah, I would guess that if
Speaker 1: it were Robert Nicola Fulton, we would all be just
Speaker 1: fawning over him because of Tesla's and I know we
Speaker 1: both lost some geek c there I think anyway, His
Speaker 1: version was an aluminum body car that had detachable fabric
Speaker 1: wings to turn it into a light plane, and it
Speaker 1: also had a detachable propeller that would serve as propulsion.
Speaker 1: And they built four prototypes but it never went into production.
Speaker 1: UM and the following year, Consolidated Vaulty developed the convert Car,
Speaker 1: which was a two door sedan with detachable airplane unit.
Speaker 1: So in this case, it's like an entire kind of
Speaker 1: airplane kit that you could fit on top of this car.
Speaker 1: And they had some success, at least, well, they had
Speaker 1: limited early success with their with their tests. Didn't think, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they had two successful tests. Um, they had two successful tests.
Speaker 1: Improved they could it could fly for about an hour
Speaker 1: and travel it around forty five p 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. But it was pretty good. Yeah, so to
Speaker 1: flights going pretty slow, but unfortunately the third flight not
Speaker 1: so successful. Yeah, and that that was pretty much the
Speaker 1: end of the project, right. They were trying to get
Speaker 1: some marketing dollars behind it. After the crash. That was
Speaker 1: a complete disaster for them, and it was it was scrapped.
Speaker 1: They decided not to go forward with it. Molten B.
Speaker 1: Taylor builds the Arrow Car, which was actually inspired by
Speaker 1: Robert Edison Fulton Junior's design. It also had detachable wings
Speaker 1: and a detachable tail so they could stash those in
Speaker 1: a in a trailer. Yeah, this is one of those
Speaker 1: that you would put all those parts in a trailer,
Speaker 1: tow it to the airport, then take everything out, assemble
Speaker 1: it on the car. And according to the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: a practiced owner could assemble the Arrow Car from into
Speaker 1: flying form within ten minutes. Ten minutes to turn into
Speaker 1: an airplane. I can't assemble a microwave dinner, and ten
Speaker 1: I don't. I certainly anyone who watched me play Minecraft
Speaker 1: knows ten minutes is not enough time for me to
Speaker 1: assemble anything. This was another tail end propeller yep, and
Speaker 1: it looks like a mini car and only six were
Speaker 1: ever built. In fact, one of them I think was current,
Speaker 1: was on the market recently for just over like a
Speaker 1: million dollars or something like. It actually looks very quaint
Speaker 1: like it looks like a quaint little antique car that
Speaker 1: for some reason has had an airplane tail merged onto
Speaker 1: the end of it and wings that sprouted out of it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but if you, if you, you could easily
Speaker 1: imagine removing those and it would look like a little Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this one was more of a car, although again
Speaker 1: you could not, you know, effortlessly convert to flying form,
Speaker 1: which is really what we're going for here, right. We
Speaker 1: want a car that you could drive on the streets
Speaker 1: and then when traffic is getting really badly, you put
Speaker 1: press button and it transforms like in an anime. And
Speaker 1: it would be a while and still will be a
Speaker 1: while before we see something like that. Uh So, nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: Paul Maler introduces the x M two. Now Maller will
Speaker 1: be well, we'll go ahead and tell Mahler's story. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a disappointing story. But the x M two
Speaker 1: was the first prototype of his sky car concept that
Speaker 1: one would hover, but he couldn't get it to fly.
Speaker 1: So he would continue to to kind of refine this design,
Speaker 1: and in ninety nine was the first one. Nine he
Speaker 1: introduces the M two hundred X, which could fly in
Speaker 1: an altitude of about fifteen meters or around fifty feet,
Speaker 1: and then He would later introduce the sky car M
Speaker 1: four hundred, which is a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft
Speaker 1: vt o L vertical takeoff or landing really, which could
Speaker 1: reach speeds theoretically of four hundred miles per hour or
Speaker 1: six hundred forty four kilometers power. But the cruising speed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you imagine your average motorists controlling a vehicle traveling
Speaker 1: traveling at that speed, I literally cannot have the cruising speed. Now,
Speaker 1: that was the top speed. The cruising speed was three
Speaker 1: fifty miles per us. Oh well that's much a better
Speaker 1: or five hundred sixty three kilometers per hour. Fuel for
Speaker 1: the vehicle included simple, simple household items. The asolene was
Speaker 1: one diesel okay, alcohol okay, kerosene and propane all at
Speaker 1: the same time. Yeah. Well it's you know, because it
Speaker 1: was using some pretty powerful sure which which also yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: the average voters just has those lying around all right, exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, you can just go to one filling station
Speaker 1: and find all of those. Some filling stations you might,
Speaker 1: but not many had a range of about nine hundred miles,
Speaker 1: which is about hundred fifty kilometers. Is that the same
Speaker 1: as it's car mode range. Uh no, No, it's Kira
Speaker 1: moded hat a mileage of twenty miles per gallon or
Speaker 1: thirty two point two kilometers per gallon. I know, really
Speaker 1: usually do leaders per kilometer, but there's only so much
Speaker 1: conversion I can do. Guys, I have to apologize for
Speaker 1: my American nous. Yeah, but the initial price for the
Speaker 1: M four hundred was quoted to be a millions Macarou's
Speaker 1: one million bucks. But the promises of Mueller never quite
Speaker 1: panned out. So in two thousand three they did a
Speaker 1: demonstration where the M four hundred hovered, but it hovered
Speaker 1: on a tether like it was tethered to the ground.
Speaker 1: It did not fly. Um, so it wasn't really awe
Speaker 1: inspiring or giving a lot of people confidence in the project.
Speaker 1: And in fact, by two thousand nine they still didn't
Speaker 1: have a flying car to show off, and Maller ended
Speaker 1: up filing for personal protection under Chapter eleven as in bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: Turned out apparently the company had spent something like one
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars over forty years trying to get this
Speaker 1: flying car designed to work, and it had not happened.
Speaker 1: Hundred million bucks, So yeah, it was definitely a tough,
Speaker 1: tough story. Now, Maller, while he filed for protection under
Speaker 1: Chapter eleven, the company, Maller International, is still from why
Speaker 1: I understand, still operating in a very limited capacity. So
Speaker 1: the company didn't go away, but Maller certainly had to
Speaker 1: look for some financial protection after after just not being
Speaker 1: able to turn this around. Now that leads us up
Speaker 1: to the last one we're going to talk about before
Speaker 1: our break. Uh. It dates back to two thousand one,
Speaker 1: the Skywriter X two R. So this one is designed
Speaker 1: by Macro Industries Incorporated, and it's another V T O
Speaker 1: L type of vehicle, and this one uses ducted fans
Speaker 1: as propulsion instead of propellers. So, uh, it kind of
Speaker 1: looks like like a casual glance, you would look and say, oh,
Speaker 1: those are turbines, but they're not actually turbines. So it's
Speaker 1: around casing. On the inside of this casing is a
Speaker 1: fan blade and those fans turn and provide the lift,
Speaker 1: and you can tilt the ducts in different directions so
Speaker 1: that you can do the vertical takeoff and landing, or
Speaker 1: tilt them forward so that you get that forward propulsion
Speaker 1: like I like I have her carrier. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: little hover carrier thing. According to the website, they were
Speaker 1: the car would have lots of dynamic routing information, so
Speaker 1: it would allow it to plan out a route that
Speaker 1: would keep it clear from the pathway of other flying
Speaker 1: car motorists, because they actually said their goal is to
Speaker 1: make the flying car reality for the average consumer. But
Speaker 1: of course, you know, to you and I, we just
Speaker 1: sit there and think about Atlanta traffic right now. Just
Speaker 1: 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, 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 advanced, we've got better with like collision detection and prevention,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Automated systems that can take over
Speaker 1: in case a manual accident is about to happen. So
Speaker 1: things have gotten to the point where you could kind
Speaker 1: of see a reality here, but it's one that's kind
Speaker 1: of early. Yeah yeah, And you know, I I heard
Speaker 1: a little bit about this and it sounds like a
Speaker 1: kind of solid plan. Where did this one actually happen?
Speaker 1: They said that the first models of this car would
Speaker 1: be available within five years of the project receiving adequate funding.
Speaker 1: As far as they can tell, the project has yet
Speaker 1: to receive what they call adequate funding, So uh, that
Speaker 1: five years is kind of the perpetual five years off
Speaker 1: from now, just like most technological advances are ten to
Speaker 1: 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 aircraft that drives than a yeah yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it looks more like a plane than it does
Speaker 1: a car. It looks like it looks like a plane
Speaker 1: that's small enough when everything folds up for it to
Speaker 1: fit into your garage, as opposed to a car. That
Speaker 1: can turn into a flying machine. It looks like a
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: But we do have a few of those that we
Speaker 1: want to talk about, and before we do that, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright, so
Speaker 1: we're back now. The next car on our list is
Speaker 1: one of my favorites because it's so different from all
Speaker 1: the other ones we've been mentioning so far. Like all
Speaker 1: the ones we've talked about either had some sort of
Speaker 1: v T o L system where they were going to
Speaker 1: hover and take off and then fly forward, right, which
Speaker 1: I'm actually kind of impressed by. I think that that
Speaker 1: a vto L would be a little bit more difficult
Speaker 1: to engineer, and therefore, yeah, it's got some challenges, but
Speaker 1: it would, assuming you could get it to work, it
Speaker 1: would be way easier for your average driver, right, because
Speaker 1: it wouldn't mean that you wouldn't have to go find
Speaker 1: a longer slap in air strip so that you could
Speaker 1: get up to enough speed to get lift and then
Speaker 1: take off. This would allow you to yeah, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: at a standstill, you lift up, you fly off where
Speaker 1: you want to go. And I think you need to
Speaker 1: be at a standstill with some you know, like hundred
Speaker 1: feet of clear space around you, so that you didn't
Speaker 1: you know, destroy surrounding. My precision is amazing. I am
Speaker 1: fully confident I could take off from like a crowded
Speaker 1: parking lot with tiny scratches. Maybe. Uh So we're talking
Speaker 1: about now the Parajet skycr and the Parajet skycar is
Speaker 1: one of my favorites. Parajet, you kind of get the
Speaker 1: feeling here. There's a para sail or a parachute that
Speaker 1: is attached to essentially a dune buggy. So it looks
Speaker 1: like something that came out of Mad Max, right, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you could take this to the Thunderdome in
Speaker 1: style and um, and it has this para sail that
Speaker 1: you can deploy, and on the very back of the
Speaker 1: dune buggy is an enormous fan, So it looks a
Speaker 1: lot like like like one of those Evergladesh kind of
Speaker 1: Archer likes, Yeah, exactly, it'd be one of those. So
Speaker 1: it's a dune buggy with the fan on the back
Speaker 1: and the parasale that you deploy, And the way it
Speaker 1: works is that you would, if you wanted to actually fly,
Speaker 1: you would take the parasale part out, lay it behind
Speaker 1: the car, start up your fan, and then start driving
Speaker 1: and once you hit about thirty seven miles per hour
Speaker 1: or sixty kilometers per hour, you would have enough lift
Speaker 1: there from the para sale to lift off the ground
Speaker 1: and use the fan to control your pitch and your role.
Speaker 1: That sounds so terrifying but wonderful. The videos of this
Speaker 1: thing I absolutely adore. Now, granted again you don't have
Speaker 1: any wings, so it's not like a you know, airplane
Speaker 1: slash car. This is a car that has a pair
Speaker 1: of sale and a propeller on it. That's pretty much
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. And uh, that sounds like it
Speaker 1: would still count as a as a light sport vehicle. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you would have to have sport aircraft. You have to
Speaker 1: have a light sport aircraft piloting license to to be
Speaker 1: able to fly this legally. Obviously there in fact, a
Speaker 1: lot of the ones we're going to talk about, the
Speaker 1: earlier ones we were talking about, never really got beyond
Speaker 1: prototype or concept, so it was kind of right, right,
Speaker 1: they 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 blase 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, and if it can only be a
Speaker 1: one or two seater just the pilot and up to
Speaker 1: one passenger, um you know, max weight of like six
Speaker 1: which is one thousand, three twenty pounds, and a max
Speaker 1: speed of a hundred and twenty nuts, which is like
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty eight miles per hour or two
Speaker 1: d and twenty two kilometers per hour. So it's going
Speaker 1: relatively by the speed of planes slow rum and so
Speaker 1: it's all you really need is a driver's license and
Speaker 1: ah this this sport pilot certifications. You don't need the
Speaker 1: full medical thing where a doctor approved by the f
Speaker 1: a A comes out and says like, yes, you are
Speaker 1: mentally and physically fit to pilot. Right, you can be
Speaker 1: as unstable as you like, as long as you don't
Speaker 1: because the damage that you'll create a few crash is
Speaker 1: relatively small. Well, the Parajet skycar, it's top speed is
Speaker 1: well within those parameters. Is that a hundred fifteen miles
Speaker 1: per hour or about a hundred eighty five kilometers per
Speaker 1: hour on the ground and in the skair it's fifty
Speaker 1: five miles per hour or eight nine kilometers per hour.
Speaker 1: And 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: It a gallon of gas will take it about fifty
Speaker 1: six point five miles on the ground or two hundred
Speaker 1: nautical miles in the sky. And it costs one hundred
Speaker 1: nineteen thousand dollars for a dune buggy, which is high
Speaker 1: for a dune bug gam sure, but it's approximately average
Speaker 1: for 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're
Speaker 1: they're crazy extravagant, this one actually had a practical use.
Speaker 1: Uh that's more than I can say for the pal
Speaker 1: V one, which is a three wheeled vehicle that converts
Speaker 1: into a gyrocopter. I I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I want one of these right now. Okay, So it
Speaker 1: looks like a have you ever seen the Mono tracer?
Speaker 1: You might not have. There's actually one in Atlanta, and
Speaker 1: I think they only ever made something like seventy of them.
Speaker 1: I do not believe that I've seen one. Have you
Speaker 1: seen tron? Do you know what the light cycle and
Speaker 1: tron looks like, that's all right, that's a mono tracer
Speaker 1: and if you just make a couple of adjustments, that's
Speaker 1: essentially what the pal v one looks like. But instead
Speaker 1: of two wheels, it's got three. It's got two in
Speaker 1: the back, one in the front. It handles like a
Speaker 1: motorcycle and h 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 rotor gets going,
Speaker 1: it's self propelling. Really it's a gyrocopter. Will have to
Speaker 1: do a whole episode on how gyrocopters were. Absolutely, but uh,
Speaker 1: it can then do a you know, a very cool
Speaker 1: take off because it's just like any other gyrocopter and
Speaker 1: you can fly it around. And this is where the
Speaker 1: blase attitude comes in. They say, like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: designed to fly around or below four thousand feet, which
Speaker 1: is about which that's under the visual flight rules traffic,
Speaker 1: meaning you don't have to have lots of instruments. You
Speaker 1: can you can fly by sight right your cabin doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be pressurized at that at that height, and
Speaker 1: you're not really going to be interfering with commercial and
Speaker 1: they essentially say that, you know, at that height, the
Speaker 1: government doesn't really care, so have fun. That's essentially what
Speaker 1: the messages. I'm not if that is accurate. I think
Speaker 1: that there's a problem. It's kind of terrifying. Really. It
Speaker 1: can reach top speeds of a hundred twelve miles prour
Speaker 1: or kilometers prower on land or in the air. So, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: terrifying no matter how you put it. But it looks awesome.
Speaker 1: I mean, the pictures and everything the video is is
Speaker 1: really it's a ton of fun. So they have made prototypes.
Speaker 1: These exist. Yeah, you could get one of the 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 uh they create
Speaker 1: this kind of funky elongated car body because the wings
Speaker 1: are they're not necessarily short, so the whole car is
Speaker 1: a long car and the very back of the car
Speaker 1: is also kind of funky. It has this sort of
Speaker 1: uh these tail fins that pop out the back, so
Speaker 1: the tail of the aircraft, UH think of like a
Speaker 1: horizontal tail with two vertical 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 They're 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
Speaker 1: would be something else. Um there. This one has a
Speaker 1: double steering wheel, which I thought was really cool. The
Speaker 1: outer steering wheel is designed to drive the car and
Speaker 1: the inter steering wheel is designed to drive it when
Speaker 1: it's in the air. Steering wheel not a not a
Speaker 1: joystick air travel exactly. And it's you know, I guess too.
Speaker 1: To conserve space, they built two in one. Um I don't.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen pictures of how this looks, so I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly, Like if the second one, the one
Speaker 1: in the middle, if it projects out a little bit,
Speaker 1: I would imagine when I have to Otherwise I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't see how you would be able to manipulate it.
Speaker 1: But the description I thought was really interesting. And you
Speaker 1: just you push a button to go into aircraft mode
Speaker 1: and that makes the wings unfold and they lock into
Speaker 1: aircraft position. And you would have to do this at
Speaker 1: an airport. This is one of those those cars where
Speaker 1: you would have to drive it to an airport, get
Speaker 1: on the landing strip, unfold the wings until they're locked
Speaker 1: into place, and then you could drive until you reach
Speaker 1: lift off speed and take off. So you couldn't just
Speaker 1: do this on the street. That would be bad um.
Speaker 1: And it has a top speed of a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty four miles per hour or two hundred kilometers per
Speaker 1: hour when it's an airplane mode, and has a range
Speaker 1: of about four hundred thirty miles or seven hundred kilometers
Speaker 1: and according to the designer, who is Stefn Kleine. Stefan
Speaker 1: says that you can refuel this at any standard gas station,
Speaker 1: which suggests that it is actually using regular gasoline or
Speaker 1: diesel one of the two. It's not using any kind
Speaker 1: of airplane fuel. Automotive fuel is becoming for especially for
Speaker 1: these small sport craft, a more popular choice from what
Speaker 1: I've been reading right now. This one has not yet
Speaker 1: been certified by the government, but we imagine that it
Speaker 1: would probably fall under the same certification as other UH
Speaker 1: flying cars have under the light sport aircraft designation, so
Speaker 1: UH this would also be another one where you would
Speaker 1: have to have that pilot license or to operate it.
Speaker 1: The wingspan on this thing is twenty seven feet wide
Speaker 1: or eight point two meters, which is why I say
Speaker 1: it's an aircraft first in a car second, because you know,
Speaker 1: at twenty seven ft when you fold that back, that
Speaker 1: means that car has to be pretty long. It's it
Speaker 1: does not look like a car. Like you. You look
Speaker 1: at this and you think, I don't know what that is,
Speaker 1: but it's not a car. It sounds like not that
Speaker 1: many of these that we've been talking about would look
Speaker 1: like cars in any kind of shape. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of these would go to amateur pilots who have
Speaker 1: a lot of income. Pretty typical of amateur pilots anyway,
Speaker 1: because it's expensive to be a pilot. Oh sure, sure,
Speaker 1: but you know, and and there there is a problem
Speaker 1: of many of the public airports that you can land in.
Speaker 1: Once you land there, there's no public transportation that goes
Speaker 1: out of them. They're they're too small to have even
Speaker 1: like a taxi stand or something like that. So so
Speaker 1: you need to and it can be a pain if
Speaker 1: you if you fly your plane somewhere and you want
Speaker 1: to immediately go elsewhere. Therefore, this the thing that you
Speaker 1: could drive on the ground as well as in the air,
Speaker 1: more expensive than any other thing you could speaking of
Speaker 1: more expensive I so you have all right, So here's
Speaker 1: the grand daddy of flying cars. This is the one
Speaker 1: that's been the news recently, right, Yeah, the Terrafugia um
Speaker 1: trans Transition. Yes, why do I always forget that word?
Speaker 1: It's really it's a transition. It's it's kind of built
Speaker 1: for a purpose of transitioning from car to airplane airplane.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. The Terrafugia tagline is we are driven to fly,
Speaker 1: which apparently I wrote the tagline is someone there is
Speaker 1: very like minded to you. That's terrifying. UMU their their
Speaker 1: first model. This transition has been in development for seven years.
Speaker 1: As of flight testing finally occurred in UM, they are
Speaker 1: taking pre orders. Uh wow, how much is it? Uh?
Speaker 1: Two dollars I got check my account, which you know
Speaker 1: is high for a car. Um, it's actually really high
Speaker 1: for a plane as well. The first car that's also
Speaker 1: a plane a steel. Seeing as how your choices are
Speaker 1: so limited, and that's almost entire I think that every
Speaker 1: single one that we've talked about has has projected a
Speaker 1: lower price than that's one. Um. But okay, so so
Speaker 1: this is a this is a two seater street legal
Speaker 1: airplane that converts between driving mode and flying mode and
Speaker 1: supposedly under a minute. And it's a it's another press
Speaker 1: of button, it doesn't kind of thing. Um. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: would fit into a standard single car garage. UM has
Speaker 1: a full vehicle parachute in case anything terrible happens at
Speaker 1: above five feet very important, Yes, and supposedly meets the
Speaker 1: federal motor vehicle stand safety standards that have been put
Speaker 1: forth by the uh National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration.
Speaker 1: So that's that's something else that we have to talk about.
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that these vehicles have to meet
Speaker 1: two different sets of standards, right, they have to meet
Speaker 1: a certain set standards by the f a A and
Speaker 1: another one by by the Highway. You know, they have
Speaker 1: to be both safe as cars and safe as aircraft.
Speaker 1: And that is that is a lot of safety stuff
Speaker 1: to talk about, which I think is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why none of none of this has come out
Speaker 1: of prototype in particularly yet, especially not for consumer purchase. Now,
Speaker 1: when would these things be available? Like, are we talking
Speaker 1: ten years? Uh, they've they they haven't really projected a
Speaker 1: date that I've seen. Yeah, I saw someone saying that
Speaker 1: it might be in this few as two years, which
Speaker 1: means by theoretically these things could be available. And again,
Speaker 1: because it would be a light sport aircraft, you would
Speaker 1: have to have a pilot's license to operate it, so
Speaker 1: I assume you would also have to drive this thing
Speaker 1: out to an airport, just like some of the other
Speaker 1: ones we've talked about. Absolutely, that's that's exactly the gig
Speaker 1: for this sort of thing. Um, well, that that means
Speaker 1: that it's not going to be something that's going to
Speaker 1: absolutely fill the skies as soon as it rolls off
Speaker 1: the production line. And no, this is also a way
Speaker 1: more of a of a drivable aircraft than it is
Speaker 1: a flying flying car. Right, Um, well, who's going to
Speaker 1: make a flying car? Lauren? I want my flying car? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: you know 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: it really is. I mean, this is an engine that's
Speaker 1: really being lauded for its fuel economy and has a
Speaker 1: whole lot of onboard computers to run all kinds of
Speaker 1: terrific diagnostics for you that that are going to read
Speaker 1: out in a way that's useful even if you're not
Speaker 1: an engineer. So, so it's a So it's a pretty
Speaker 1: cool engine. And uh, they're they're talking about I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: when they say that it fits in a standard single
Speaker 1: car garage, we're we're talking about a uh seventy eight
Speaker 1: inch or two meter tall vehicle with a eight meter
Speaker 1: twenty six ft wingspan and six m or nineteen foot length. Um.
Speaker 1: If you want to compare that to say, like a camera, Um,
Speaker 1: you're you're talking to out a little bit taller, about
Speaker 1: half meter, not not half a meter one point five ms.
Speaker 1: I was thinking half a meter shorter, and then words
Speaker 1: didn't happen. That's significantly shorter, alright. So it's shorter than
Speaker 1: the camera is shorter than the camera is shorter, but
Speaker 1: it's it's just about as long like a hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty nine inches or five ms is what you're talking
Speaker 1: so on a camera wingspan on a camera it's about Wow. Man,
Speaker 1: I have been out of the car game for too long.
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 rear propeller and um, and
Speaker 1: you know it's what's interesting to me is that they're
Speaker 1: using the 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 and that can
Speaker 1: do two very different jobs in the same vehicle. The
Speaker 1: fact that it's turning a propeller and then can switch
Speaker 1: to 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, Tera 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 couldnt qualify as a light sport vehicle. You
Speaker 1: would need an actual pilot license in order to drive
Speaker 1: this because it contains eight because you can carry more
Speaker 1: than two people. And also, from what I understand, has
Speaker 1: not only propellers, which are used for vertical takeoff and landing.
Speaker 1: So in other words, they pivot right where they would
Speaker 1: pivot up, and they the propellers themselves fold in on
Speaker 1: the pods that they are mounted on, so then the
Speaker 1: pods would move up to vertical position, the the blades
Speaker 1: would fold out, they would start to rotate, you would
Speaker 1: gain altitude. They would then start tilting forward, so you'd
Speaker 1: start going forward, and then it switches over to from
Speaker 1: why I understand, a three 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 auto 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, uh so, yeah, this thing, but this thing,
Speaker 1: because it has the V T O L approach, means
Speaker 1: that theoretically you could take off from any location, not
Speaker 1: just in airport. So right, as long as you've got
Speaker 1: that level clearing of about a hundred feet, which is
Speaker 1: some thirty right, So it's that they are supposedly working
Speaker 1: on this. They pretty much have this just in constant draw. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've they've got some shiny computer animations of it. They
Speaker 1: said that there would be something like eight or twelve,
Speaker 1: eight to twelve years of testing before this would ever
Speaker 1: become an actual thing. So we are a good ways
Speaker 1: out from seeing this if it ever in fact becomes
Speaker 1: real reality. I think a lot of that's going to
Speaker 1: depend upon the success or failure of the transition um.
Speaker 1: If that ends up being a success, that makes it
Speaker 1: more likely that they'll be able to do more development
Speaker 1: on the t FX. I honestly don't know what to
Speaker 1: think about this. I I you know, granted, when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I wouldn't have been able to imagine
Speaker 1: a car that could take you door to door without
Speaker 1: you ever touching the wheel. And yet now we're starting
Speaker 1: to see cars in the prototype stage at various companies
Speaker 1: like Google and other and like actual car manufacturing companies too,
Speaker 1: so we're starting to see that, So maybe it's possible.
Speaker 1: It's just I think that flying is way more complicated
Speaker 1: than driving. Yeah, that's that's the thing. I mean, I
Speaker 1: I really don't think that, you know, all of that
Speaker 1: autonomous car stuff is is complicated enough as it stands.
Speaker 1: We just did a whole episode of urun Forward thinking
Speaker 1: about it, and so so check that out if you
Speaker 1: if you want to get a full breakdown of how
Speaker 1: difficult this problem really is. Although certainly, yeah, lots of
Speaker 1: companies are working on it, but I don't you know,
Speaker 1: between that and the fact that so many regulations and
Speaker 1: and laws would have to be in place in order
Speaker 1: for this to be a reality, and would take is
Speaker 1: maybe one really bad publicity, like like accident, even if
Speaker 1: no one was hurt, that's all it would take for
Speaker 1: it to essentially ground everybody. So uh, And and I
Speaker 1: don't want to be doom and gloom about it because
Speaker 1: I think that especially these these drivable planes are a
Speaker 1: really interesting concept and I really hope that a couple
Speaker 1: of these companies make some consumer level ones the next
Speaker 1: couple of years. Even if you know, two D seventy
Speaker 1: nine dollars, it's not something that this personal consumer is
Speaker 1: ready to drop on anything. Um. But but yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's that that single engine clever idea is is
Speaker 1: pretty awesome, and and having something that lightweight that you
Speaker 1: that you're still comfortable driving is is pretty rad I
Speaker 1: you know, I am skeptical but hopeful. Let me put
Speaker 1: it that way, like, if it never happens, I won't
Speaker 1: 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. Absolutely, But you know, if
Speaker 1: we don't, then I'm sure we'll figure out how to
Speaker 1: get around traffic some other way. Anyway, that was kind
Speaker 1: of our take on flying cars, the history of flying
Speaker 1: cars where they stand now. Whether or not we're going
Speaker 1: to actually see song, it's really just gonna be a
Speaker 1: couple of years. If the transition uh holds true to
Speaker 1: the schedule that I've read about. Yeah, yeah, and and
Speaker 1: I think that in the next couple of years we'll
Speaker 1: also see whether or not autonomous you know, road driving
Speaker 1: cars are going to work out or now yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's gonna be exciting either way, so we'll we'll
Speaker 1: find out. Meanwhile, if you guys have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future topics that we can cover here on tech Stuff,
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