The Future Is Almost Here: Top Prospects For Flying Cars

March 23, 2023

It has been too long since we watched George Jetson get robbed by his wife in his flying car, and we’ve been on the edge of our seats waiting for the day we could get in our own anti-gravity pod and take off anywhere. While reliable interplanetary travel is still a few decades off, several companies have been working towards flying cars to get us from point A to point B here on Earth. We kept a few close contenders off our list since they don’t quite fit the mold of “flying car,” which should be both road and air safe.

AeroMobil 4.0/5.0

The AeroMobil promises to be one of the first hybrid car-plane on the market. With its wings tucked along the roofline, the AeroMobil 4.0 can switch between a hybrid driven road mode, or fly to its destination as a small sport aircraft powered by a turbocharged four-cylinder boxer engine that churns out 300 bhp. With an airborne range of a little over 450 miles, the AeroMobil should get you anywhere you need to go. The newest version of the AeroMobile promises to be a fully electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) vehicle, designed for navigating urban environments.

Terrafugia Transition

Claiming to be the “first practical flying car,” the Transition certainly lives up to its name. It looks very much like the first draft it is, with a front end that appears to have been designed in the late 1980s and the overall sleekness of a brick. The wings fold in while the car is in drive mode, then stretch out, along with the tailpiece, to turn the car into a small sport plane. While folded in, the Transition is small enough to park in a standard single car garage. Once airborne, the Transition has a range of 400 miles and a top speed of 100 mph. Terrafugia has also been developing advanced autonomous flight technologies, including terrain avoidance, to keep it in the air when not in drive mode.

Pop.Up

The Pop.Up is a joint effort between Audi, Airbus, and Italdesign to ease urban traffic strains and provide a means of efficiently moving people around cities. The Pop.Up has three main components: the capsule, quadcopter, and ground module. Each piece is equipped with its own battery pack and automatically returns to a charge station when not in use. Designed to ease traffic congestion, the Pop.Up is essentially an autonomous taxi that can either drive you where you need to be or fly you across the city. While Airbus, Audi, and Italdesign are still working out the kinks before launching the Pop.Up in the public marketplace, the design holds plenty of promise for the future of flying cars.

The Terrafugia TF-X

The second on our list by Boston based Terrafugia; the TF-X is the follow up to the Transition. A hybrid electric VTOL, the TF-X is being designed to more closely resemble traditional car styling. The wings fold neatly along the sides of the vehicle in recessed compartments, instead of the external placement of the Transition. The TF-X should have a range of around 500 miles, and will be driven by twin 600 hp electric motors on the wing rotors, as well as a 300 hp engine that acts as both the generator and runs the rear thrust propeller. The TF-X will come equipped with safety features including an auto land system and an emergency parachute capable of delivering the vehicle to the ground should an emergency arise mid-flight.

Alauda Airspeeder

Naturally, as with everything the human race builds, someone saw the growing trend towards flying cars being a reality and said ‘we should race these.’ That person was Matt Pearson, the CEO of Alauda, whose company and team have been putting together the first flying racecar. Essentially, the Airspeeder is an overgrown quadcopter with seating for one in a body lifted by four rotors and with a top speed of 125 miles per hour. The Airspeeder is still in development, but videos and pictures have slowly leaked of the progress being made. According to the Alauda website, a demo race is scheduled for later this year, and a tentative 2020 date has been set for the first airborne grand prix. While these racers don’t have road going capability, their limited vertical rise and ‘60 Formula V styling are too close to the future of racing for us to ignore.

PAL-V Flying Car

This is probably the closest to an actual flying car as you’re likely to find just yet. The PAL-V is a road going tri-wheeler with a collapsible gyroplane rotor and prop that fold neatly in along the lines of the car, reducing the vehicle’s footprint to that of a mid-sized sedan. The company boasts the three-wheeled gyrocar provides sports car-like handling and performance on roads, accelerating to sixty in just nine seconds and has a top speed of 100 mph. In the air, however, is where the PAL really takes off. With the push of a button, the vehicle goes from drive-mode to fly-mode, stretching out the top rotor and pushing the tail assembly and rear-mounted propeller into position. From there, the vehicle flies as an autogyro to wherever your destination is within the 250 to 300-mile range. It costs some coin to ride in the first flying car, however, since the basic sport model runs a price tag of $399,000, which reaches up to $599,000 for the fully loaded Pioneer.

While we may not be getting anti-gravity cars anytime soon, there has been a strong push for vehicles that can get you there either on the ground or in the air. It may not be what we envisioned, but we are certainly inching our way towards the flying car of the future.

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