Comments on: Flying car or pipe dream?

By: puol

puol — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 03:09:27 +0000

By: hosein

hosein — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:41:36 +0000

good

By: Daniel

Daniel — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 03:42:08 +0000

I own a 172. (I’m a surgeon.) I fly it to a branch practice 150km by road away every fortnight. I spend 20 minutes driving to the airport, and an hour unloading and loading my bags, preflighting the plane, checking the weather, getting clearances, taxi-ing and getting into the air. (The flight is beautiful although sometimes a little bumpy.) At the other end I have an old car worth about $2,000 that lives at the airport. I tie down my plane, unload my bags, load my bags, and drive to the practice. This all takes about half an hour. (It’s quick because my car lives right next to where I park my plane.) I’m living the dream, but the whole exercise takes about three hours. To drive (which I do if the weather’s bad) takes one and a half. If I have to drive it means the old car at the airport doesn’t get driven for four weeks, which is not good. If the weather turns bad while I’m at the branch practice it means that I have to drive the old car home and then my good car sits at the home airport for two weeks, which is not good. Also I don’t get to fly my plane for two weeks.

All and all the bottom line is I do it for the fun, not the practicality, but I’m the only one I know who does anything like what I do. The niche is a small one.

Now a “roadable plane”! That would be great for eliminating all the loading and unloading and leaving cars at places. I could keep it in the garage at home instead of having a corroding metal plane left outside. I am the target audience. Thanks!

But I have problems with the concept:

1) Is LHS drive going to be legal on Australian roads? (We drive on the LHS.)
2) Those wings sure look flimsy when they are being folded. Can you do that on a windy day?
3) Do the wheels have mud flaps? What about stone chips on the wheel spats and airframe, and road grime in the wing joins? And debris jammed in and around the control cables and control surfaces?
4) It has a lot of windage. Would a sideways gust blow it over (when driving?) or stress the folded wings? What about the airframe, and especially the folded wings, being jolted all the time driving on country roads near regional airstrips?
5) Is my LAME going to be able to maintain this thing, or do I have to trust that it won’t be damaged in an automotive service centre. I can just imagine the young motor mechanics playing with it….
6) It’s got a lot of moving parts….
7) No-one know what the weaknesses are yet…
8) I’ve got a wife and young kids. I trust the Lycoming. I’m not sure about the Rotax. I trust the 172. There’s not much that people don’t know about it.
9) I’m going to park my plane in the hospital car park. And then in the motel car park. And maybe outside the movie theatre, parallel parked. People are going to look at it, talk about it, touch it, bump it, open their doors against it, bitch about it. Sit on it. Pull on it. Jump on it. Kick the tyres, Key it. Generally vandalise it. Then I’m supposed to drive it and fly it without worrying about it….(The Cessna’s in a secure environment.)
10) Inevitably, on the road, I’m going to have an accident. What’s that going ot cost? (I don’t insure the Cessna.)
11) I have a steep driveway at my place and a sharp turn into the garage. What’s the approach and departure angle, and what’s the turning circle?
12) Often on weekends I go for trips with my wife and kids. A two seater wouldn’t allow that obviously.
13) The 172 is easy to fly and land on rough strips. It’s industry standard. If I die in it nobody is going to say “he was an irresponsible show-off idiot flying an experimental plane” to my wife of kids.
14) I can always sell the 172 if I want to. I doubt I could ever sell the “roadable plane”.
15) I could always put the 172 online at the flying school if I wanted to.
16) How easy is it to load baggage in and out of the roadable plane?
17) What would insurance cost (if even possible)?

Overall, I’ve always dreamed of owning something like a “roadable plane”, I could afford it, I would use it for business, and I could stand the controversy. But I still can’t really see myself getting one. I hope you can prove me wrong.

By: John

John — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 03:19:48 +0000

So far it would seem to me that the Terrafugia transition has been remarkably successful in doing what it set out to do. It flies, it drives and has proven the concept. As a maintenance engineer, pilot and cessna owner here in Australia, I think the team that have taken this project through to its current stage of development deserve recognition for their achievements so far. Well done and I look forward to seeing the aircraft close up in time to come.

By: Julia

Julia — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:41:38 +0000

I wanted to comment and thank the author, good stuff

By: Rich Strong

Rich Strong — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:01:54 +0000

The problem is that there are hundreds of cities that are hundreds of miles apart, as crows fly,
and even further by fuel-wasting stop-and-go zig-zaggy road routes.
Many travellers and cargo movers need to go between and within them on a daily basis,
BUT the highway system is forecast to be even more congested and speed-limitted in the future.
There are thousands of nearly-empty small airports that can be used by fast airplanes in nearly-empty skies;
however, most airports are located out of towns, so travellers require some form of
ground transportation, such as rental cars, to get to and from their desired destinations in towns and suburbs.
Private and business airplane owners and renters still waste precious time changing from car to plane and back again,
such as parking, transferring baggage, renting cars, and readying and securing their airplanes.
Airline travellers must deal with even more problems of scheduling, ticketing,
reservations, routing, seatmates, lost baggage, and security queues.
An optimum solution may be the use of flyable automobiles that combine the speed of airplanes
with the convenience of automobiles, in automatically transformable vehicles – aircars.
Over the years of discussing the project with others, general fallacies have been voiced often:
1) cars are too heavy to fly; 2) “average” drivers are too dangerous to fly; and
3) the sky is too small for millions of aircars.
The truths are: 1) the Strongmobile designs are technically sound for adequate performance;
2) licensed pilot-aviators are much better trained and qualified than poor drivers; and
3) the skies are big enough and control is adequate for hundreds of thousands of aircars.
Business travellers who make a dozen or so trips per month may find that avoiding their payroll
and support costs on a time basis offsets the costs of their aircars, as compared to other ways of travel.
You may see here a study, like “diamonds in the rough”, by retired Air Force Command Pilot-Aero Engineer Rich Strong,
developed over a 50-year period, that combines an advanced design, a sustainable business plan, and convenient operation.
Thousands of StrongMobile fans have viewed this study, so look for somebody to cut and polish the rough diamonds and
make shining gems!

By: Rich Strong

Rich Strong — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:53:05 +0000

You are cordially invited to see my flying car project at my website, http://www.strongware.com/dragon.

By: David

David — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:34:54 +0000

After exploring roadable aircraft, MotoPOD LLC designed a belly pod to carry a 250cc motorcycle. After landing, the pilot can remove the motorcycle, unfold the handlebars and ride away in just a few minutes. The prototype is already flying on a Vans RV-10 with STC’d installations planned for the Cirrus SR-20, 22 Cessna 350, 400, 182 and others.

This simple approach combines a perfectly good motorcycle with a very nice aircraft… and without much trade-off. It’s not a solution for everyone, but it works well for the folks that enjoy motorcycles.

By: Chopper

Chopper — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 14:15:48 +0000

Here’s an alternative idea – make a roadable HELICOPTER. During your normal 45 minute commute home each night, imagine getting coming to a complete halt in the evening rush hour. Just check for powerlines, unfold the rotors, do a vertical take-off and fly home instead!

Would anyone be interested in doing that…?

By: Ken

Ken — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 14:08:23 +0000

With any breakthrough technology, there is a ‘bleeding edge’. Previous attempts to create a vehicle that could fly and drive (or even drive and ‘motorboat’) appealed to early adopters but few others. Sometimes the true benefit to the masses comes from advances in technology that are a just small part of the original (NASA and Velcro, for instance). Perhaps there is a nugget of technological value that will stem from this invention that will appeal to all.

A visionary often creates a solution to which there is no problem. In time, though, others may see uses that weren’t originally anticipated. This is where mass appeal seems to come from. It was awfully expensive to set up the infrastructure for the telegraph, just to be able to send a message that could easily have been send by mail. Eventually, speed was recognized as valuable and both telegraph and telephone were perceived to be needed. But this took time. When it finally was recognized that there was a need, there was competition – seemingly everybody got into the business. Many failed. Businesses merged, until few remained. The same is true with automobiles, railroads, airlines, etc. The trick is to understand this and think HARD about how it could be used and by whom.

With luck, this will be more than just a proof of concept. Perhaps, with good press and some out-of-the-box thinking by potential users (and the owners), it will be well adopted and they will become rich. However, this is an incredible long shot. Perhaps they will be the next Microsoft, and not the next Radio Shack, Atari, Commodore, Packarf Bell, Zenith, etc.