Moving from History in today’s earlier posts, lets now move to the future. A lot of technology first suggested in various forms of sci-fi have eventually come to fruition, particularly when it comes to communications. However one area we don’t seem to have made much progress on has been transport, after all where are our hoverboards, transporters or flying cars. Well for the last one at least, one company thinks they will be selling flying cars within a decade.
It’s not quite The Jetsons, but the flying car people from Terrafugia are at it again.
The US company based in Massachusetts has just unveiled the TF-X, a car that comes with vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) capability with electric motors and custom-made quiet rotors.
While the electric motors provide the vertical liftoff, a powerful turbine engine produces the go forward in flight mode.
Terrafugia are the same company that unveiled the Transition prototype last year which was effectively a folding-wing aircraft that required a runway of 500 metres for take-off, but with the wings folded away, it could be driven on the highway, despite looking like a duck out of water.
The Transition, which is struggling for certification in the US but the company has around 100 orders for, currently has a price tag of US$279,000 (NZ$330,000) and the TF-X – which is at least 10 years away from becoming a production reality – is likely to top that.
“The final pricing will not be set until we are much closer to delivery,” according to Terrafugia.
So what do you think, is it vaporware or will it become a reality? Further if it did become a reality would it really solve our transport problems or just create a whole pile of new ones as even movies seem to include flying cars seem to still have congestion problems. Would it mean we could reclaim our streets for pedestrians and cyclists?
Personally I’m not convinced it will happen.
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Looks way cool, but I doubt it does much more than that.
I am not an airplane engineer (though I do have a glider pilot’s license) but I feel pretty confident that those wings look WAY too short to carry any serious weight (i.e. the weight of a light car, let alone a small airplane), so unless your main engine was way more powerful than 300HP and thus could provide direct lift that way, this literally isn’t going to fly. Happy to be proven wrong, but not expecting to.
More interesting is the idea of making vehicles drive/fly on automatic. Barring legal barriers, that’s pretty much a given in 5-15 years, I think, and will improve safety a lot.
Lol self driving cars have been 5-15 years away since the 1960’s
We have self driving cars, they are just shit haha. And really expensive.
The issue with self driving cars has been getting them to run on the same system as non-self driving cars.
Merc is in the process of releasing one that can do just that this year however.
It says the lift engines run 1MW. So maybe the 1300hp is enough for lift. Can’t see that sort of power consumption ever being accessible to the masses. Guess that’s the problem with flying cars, you have to lift all the mass up in the air before you move it around.
The whole “tilting rotor” thing is a great theoretical idea, but it as an absolute cow to get right,
The US military with their billions of dollars are still have trouble with the V22 Osprey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_V-22_Osprey
I don’t doubt that the technology for self-driving cars is imminent. What I have a hard time understanding is how the product roll out is going to work. Here’s the thing. You pay some premium for a new self-drive car – who knows how much, but probably a lot, at least in the early stages. Now your the only schmuck in NZ with a self-driving car. So you can be a complete pain the backside tailgating people because your car can prevent itself from crashing, but where’s the advantage?
Also… what little pleasure most people get from driving is from doing the actual driving, and you have to pay for the privilege of this being taken away from you. You don’t need to be an avid fan of Top Gear (I’m not), to empathize with this perspective. Assistance like ABS braking is one thing, but having the machine do everything else… I just don’t buy it, and I don’t think many other people will either.
I know that fax machines and cell phones eventually took off because the network benefits of having them eventually meant that everyone had to get one (although fax machines, not so much any more…) but this seems to me like a much harder sell, given how long it takes for people to change their cars – you could be waiting 10 years for there to be enough self-drive cars around the place for any obvious benefit to accrue.
So talk me through it… short of the government intervening and forcing everyone to buy one (remember how that went with fluorescent light bulbs?!), or the government actually buying everyone one (in which case, why not just build, I dunno… a rail system?!)… I don’t see it.
Check out http://www.projectmicrocar.co.nz. I have outlined how we go from a fleet of leased Narrow Electric Microcars, Initelligent Motorways and eventually Smart navigation/cruise control. Replacing 25% of vehicles on the congested parts of the motorway with affodable leased Narrow Electric Microcars will solve traffic congestion.
That looks like an interesting piece of lateral thinking, but it’s nothing to do with the self-driving smart cars I was asking about! Also, how is it different in outcome from adding a lane to all the motorways (actually less than a lane, since not all cars are single occupant)? And won’t that just lead to more cars and congestion anyway (more road space = more cars, that’s how this works).
At the AM and PM peaks most cars are single occupant. If all single occupant vehicles at peak time were replaced with narrow vehicles then you will add 200-300% capacity to the motorway network. At Aucklands rate of growth (double every 30 years) this would give us 90 years capacity at which time cars will have smart technologies that will unlock another 500% of motorway capacity.
One of the key aims of projectmicrocar is that the new narrow vehicles are future proofed for smart technologies so that as the technology becomes affordable then the technology can be deployed.
I encourage you to read the full details in the 19 page discussion document.
FYI – The Narrow electric vehicle which I case studied has a 600KW output at the wheel and will easily outpace a Ford XR8 or Holden Clubsport (approx 325KW).
What happens at ramps, intersections, traffic lights, lane merges? Two rows of vehicles in each lane means an exponential increase in conflicting movements. Ever been to Saigon to see how their massed fleet of narrow vehicles (motorcycles) performs? It’s chaos.
And 600kw at the wheel is absolutely ridiculous, you must be wrong there. That’s about the same power output as a formula one car.
Applying standard road rules of single lane sorts out the lane merging issues. The main point is to solve motorway congestion with local road congestion a second priority. There is a solution to every problem.
Your doubt over the 600KW output indicates you have not read the 19 page discussion document. With electric engines it is all about the Torque.
Below is the Tango T600 at a drag race. This vehicle is case studied in the 19 page discussion document.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chba5a_3rGo
WORLD’S FASTEST ELECTRIC DRAGSTER Current Eliminator V
Ha ok, you’re case study is a drag racer. I assumed you were talking about a narrow vehicle that would be driven on the motorway.
Just proving the case on output.
Below is the Tango T600 Narrow Microcar also at a drag race. This vehicle is case studied in the 19 page discussion document.
I can see a few real benefits to self-driving cars over the current system:
1. Parking – cars will be able to go trundle off and park themselves anywhere. You can trade the cost of parking somewhere expensive, for the running cost of moving the car to somewhere parking is cheap. If you’re going to be quick, the car can just circle around. You can also reduce the number and impact of parking spaces, since now you only need one per vehicle in out-of-the-way storage areas, not lots of parking right at each destination. It’s entirely possible that a huge proportion of the demand can be met with existing on-street parking down residential side streets (which have huge unused capacity at the moment).
2. Taxis and buses – by eliminating the cost of the driver, taxis will be a bit cheaper, and buses won’t have the cost of a driver anymore, making both more cost effective (and popular). We’ll probably run smaller buses at much higher frequencies.
3. Safety, especially for pedestrians. If driverless vehicles are most of the vehicles around, and can be relied on not to hit pedestrians, it will be great for people on foot, since you’ll be able to cross the roadway whenever you want and the cars will stop for you.
The big downside is the side effect of those three – 1 and 2 will mean more trips, and 3 will mean traffic hold-ups. Cars will also hold up traffic stopping to drop people off a lot more. So congestion would be lots worse.
Anyway, they’re not here yet. If we assume they’re coming, what does it mean for transport planning? I can think of a few things:
1. We don’t need as much parking, especially in major destinations like suburban and city centres.
2. Allocating and/or pricing road-space will become more important, with a lot more movements of empty vehicles clogging the roads. Efficient uses of the roadway like bus lanes will be critical. We’ll also eliminate on-street parking in favour of traffic lanes in many places.
3. Our streets will become more attractive places for pedestrians, whether we plan for it or not. I suspect most of our minor streets will become real or de-facto shared spaces. On major roads, I expect the law will change, and pedestrians will be required to stay on the footpath. But in order to get compliance with that, there will need to be a lot more pedestrian crossings providing a lot more pedestrian priority.
4. The increased congestion will also make PT services with dedicated rights-of-way (rail and busways) more attractive.
On an individual level, it’s likely that learning to drive, and building off-street parking, are both not as valuable as long-term investments.
Probably a scam, the tech required is years away. Moller has been promoting his car for over 40 years and still no result http://www.downside.com/scams/moller/
I personally am convinced it will happen, but I doubt it will ever be a common car like the humble Toyota Corolla…….Might be useful for the police cars though….
Helicopters tend to be unstable things on the verge of disaster at the best of times. A mate who used to fly them commercially doesn’t now because he has a family he’d like to grow old with. The thought of hundreds of thousands of (what are essentially) wheeled helicopters is dangerous for their pilots and passengers, and also for the people on the ground who will be subject to large scale decapitation. But this isn’t going to happen for four reasons: Firstly, you’ll still need all the medicals, regular relicensing, and $100k worth of training that you need to fly helicopters. Secondly, the things will be too expensive to purchase and run. Thirdly, cars these days are fast and handle well, but you can be sure this won’t. Fourthly, the idea is just dumb.
So instead of about 7,000 car crashes a year, we’ll have 7,000 flying car crashes raining down on our cities.
That is the other real issue, a crash will hurt bystanders really badly.
7k crashes in a vehicle population of millions, and most of those aren’t fatal. If there are millions of helicopters then there will be a hell of a lot more than 7k crashes, and I’m guessing most of them will involve the death of the pilot, all passengers, and anyone on the ground when some spinning rotors slice them to bits.
Or, to put it another way… Most vehicles hitting other vehicles resulst in no injuries and some dented panels. A mid-air between two helicopters results in some spectacular destruction.
Another good reason this will never work: Helipads. You can’t land a helicopter anywhere near people. That rules out supermarket carparks, the street outside offices, and home driveways. We don’t have a huge helipad infrastructure.
The below list includes the preflight checklist required for a Cessna 172,
Given that most drivers don’t even check their car tyre pressure unless they get a flat, there is no way a regulator is going to let joe blogs fly one of these without a pilots license……
http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~rich/courses/cs525u-s08/projects/mtavares/Cessna172.pdf
Until they start producing Luke Skywalker’s X-34 landspeeder or Doc Brown’s flying DeLorean, I ain’t interested.
Narrow Electric Microcars, Intelligent Motorways and advances in Smart Technologies is the way to optimise our existing roads and motorways. No need to build more roads, motorways, rails tracks, tunnels and bridges.
Billions on rail or on cars?
Rail please, far more equitable.
We don’t have flying cars because the average inattentive driver can barely handle a car. Add a third dimension and the complexities of flying and you’ve got an airborne death trap. The idea of thousands or millions of these in the hands of the same people plaguing the roadways sounds like a plan for exterminating the species.
Only levitating cars would be practical – some kind of electromagnetic propulsion combined with a fusion rocket.
As a few people have mentioned already safety is a huge problem! Not to mention the clowns who can barely handle their cars at the best of times. Suicide bombers/911? It’s scary to think of the negatives out-weighing the positives.
Regardless of whether it’s real or not, it’s hardly science fiction. It will cost the same to run as a helicopter, will cost a similar amount to a helicopter, will be about as unsafe as a helicopter, can be used only in the places a helicopter can be used, will be about as popular as helicopters are, and will have the same effect on society that helicopters have already had – because it IS a helicopter.
The only original thing is the magical infallible self-driving computer, but even if we assume they can do that, it doesn’t change much. It would potentially mean that people can skip part of the expensive process of getting a helicopter pilot’s licence, but I don’t think there’s a huge untapped market of people who’d like to buy helicopters, but don’t want to learn to fly them.
This thing it already up in the air, which doesn’t make it any less of a millionaire’s plaything. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To1ExC–Pks
project microcar sounds like project macrobike. 🙂
That is an amusing comment 🙂
Below is a small documentary on the Tango T600 which is case studied in the 19 page project microcar discussion document.