Get ready for your flying car from The Jetsons. People in the popular cartoon would fly around in cars from place to place. Now, one car manufacturer is trying to make that a reality.This is what it feels like to live in the 21st century. Can you imagine!! The first flying car is going to launch in 2018. I am sure all 90’s born must remember the cartoon series “The Jetsons”. It was like a fairy tale to watch those episodes, but I must say that is going to happen really very soon. The technology developed so fast that it is on another level. We are not going to turn back now. The future is here.

WHAT IS FLYING CAR??

 A flying car is a type of PERSONAL AIR VEHICLE that provides door-to-door transportation by both road and air. The term “flying car” is often used to include ROADABLE AIRCRAFT and HOVERCARS. Many prototypes have been built since the first years of the twentieth century, but no flying car has yet reached production status.

FLYING CARS BY 2018

The personal air land vehicle is looking likely to become the FIRST FLYING CAR intended for general adoption and real world application — and it could be available soon. While the first model was developed in 2012, the company is aiming to deliver its first car to the first customer by the end of 2018. They hope to produce 50 to 100 models in 2019, and a few hundred by 2020.

The PAL-V is one of many flying cars in development at the moment. Other bids include Toyota’s plan to bring a flying car to 2020 tokyo olympics— although the end goal for this model would be carrying the Olympic torch, rather than being destined for mass production.

HIGH ON PRICE

 The planned price is €299,000 EUR ($333, 340 USD) and 21540558.00 INR for the sport version and €499,000 EUR ($556, 310 USD) and 35948958.00 for the first edition. Of course, cost isn’t the only consideration: customers will need to acquire both a flying and driving license before using the vehicle, and each car will need to undergo 150 hours of flight testing before being approved.

TOYOTA IN ACTION

According to some reports, Toyota has patented a flying car. The news outlet shared the following about the new project:

The patent, number 2016/0176256, is seemingly based on an existing futuristic Toyota car concept. It uses a rear-mounted pusher propeller and a “shape morphing method of transitioning an aerocar from a land mode to a flight mode.” The design also includes retractable wings and a flexible frame that can contract in flight mode. It would also use “shape memory materials” to transition from flight to land modes.”

PATENT INFORMATION

US Application:US20160176256A1

Legal status:Granted

Application number:US14577861

Title: Shape morphing fuselage for an aerocar

A shape morphing fuselage and method of transitioning an aerocar from a land mode to a flight mode are disclosed. The fuselage includes a plurality of flexible frame members and tensile skin extending between the plurality of flexible frame members as well as an actuation system configured to bend the plurality of flexible frame members between a contracted configuration associated with a flight mode and an expanded configuration associated with a land mode. The fuselage can also include a hatch pivotable about an axis of one of the flexible frame members in the expanded configuration and configured to open for deployment and retraction of wings for the aerocar.

EARLY DEVLOPEMENT

 In 1926, Henry Ford displayed an experimental single-seat aeroplane that he called the “sky-fiverr”. The project was abandoned two years later when a distance-record attempt flight crashed, killing the pilot.

In 1940, Henry Ford famously predicted: “Mark my word: a combination airplane and motorcar is coming. You may smile, but it will come.” In the period between 1956 – 1958, Ford’s  Advanced Design studio built the Volante Tri-Athodyne, a 3/8 scale concept car model. It was designed to have three ducted fans, each with their own motor, that would lift it off the ground and move it through the air. In the mid-1980s, former Boeing engineer, Fred Barker, founded Flight Innovations Inc. and began the development of the Sky Commuter, a small duct fans-based VTOL aircraft. It was a compact, 14-foot-long (4.3 m) two-passenger and was made primarily of composite materials.

DESIGN

 Engineering:A practical flying car would have to be capable of safely taking off, flying and landing throughout heavily populated urban environments. However, to date, no vertical takeoff and landing vehicle has ever demonstrated such capabilities. To produce such an aircraft would require a propulsion system that is quiet, to avoid noise complaints , and has non-exposed rotors so it could be flown safely in urban environments.

Economics:Due to the requirement of propulsion that is both small and powerful, the cost of producing a flying car would be very high and estimated by some as much as 10 million dollars.In addition, the flying car’s energy efficiency would be much lower compared to conventional cars and other aircraft; optimal fuel efficiency for airplanes is at high speeds and high altitudes, while flying cars would be used for shorter distances, at higher frequency, lower speeds and lower altitude.

Safety: Although statistically, commercial flying is much safer than driving, unlike commercial planes personal flying cars might not have as many safety checks and their pilots would not be as well trained. Humans already have problems with the aspect of driving in two dimensions (forward and backwards, side to side), adding in the up and down aspect would make “driving” or flying as it would be, much more difficult; however, this problem might be solved via the sole use of self-flying and self driving cars.

POPULAR CULTURE

The flying car was and remains a common feature of conceptions of future, including imagined near futures such as those of the 21st century. Complaints of the non-existence of flying cars have become nearly idiomatic as expressions of disappointment in the failure of the present to measure up to the glory of past predictions.

As a result, flying cars have been referred to jokingly with the question “Where’s my flying car?”, emblematic of the supposed failure of modern technology to match futuristic visions that were promoted in earlier decades.

FUTURE OF TRANSPORT?

 They would provide a way to decrease traffic congestion, cut out airport flight times, provide alternatives for people living a long way from work. But not everyone agrees with that assessment.

Elon Musk isn’t so sure flying cars are the future of transport as he told in interview: “Obviously, I like flying things, but it’s difficult to imagine the flying car becoming a scalable solution.”

The main reason of criticism is that it would need to produce a lot of downforce to stay in the sky — which produces a lot of noise and wind — and that they may well be more dangerous than road cars: should they be involved in an accident, passengers and debris could quite literally end up falling from the sky. The flying car is going to face alot of obstacles in future in order to take Goverment approvals for human and environment safety issues.