The tech behind a flying car, originally developed and successfully test-flown in Europe, has been bought by a Chinese firm
The tech behind a flying car, originally developed and successfully test-flown in Europe, has been bought by a Chinese firm
The Slovakian AirCar, built with a BMW engine and run on normal fuel, will now be made in China.
Powered by a BMW engine and normal fuel, the AirCar flew for 35 minutes between two Slovakian airports in 2021, using runways for take-off and landing.
It took just over two minutes to transform from a car into an aircraft.
Now vehicles made based on its design will be used within a "specific geographical region" of China.
Hebei Jianxin Flying Car Technology Company, headquartered in Cangzhou, has purchased exclusive rights to manufacture and use AirCar aircraft inside an undisclosed area.
Man I hope this concept never "gets off the ground". I don't trust the average person in a car. Let alone in a flying machine? But it seems like such a waste of a concept. Probably can't use it in most cities, with big airports usually claiming the airspace around them. This one still requires a runway to take off. Try and find the space for that in a city.
This ☝
Cars in cities are already dangerous and terribly inefficient. Flying cars would be worse in every sense.
Relavant Adam something video about it for a sum-up
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I agree. There is this scene at the very beginning of Back to the Future 2 where the sky is full of flying cars and they risk running into each other because there are no lanes and everyone is driving recklessly. That's an omen! 😄
I think the main application is for licensed pilots to be able to simply drive their plane home and store it somewhere that doesn't cost a ton of money every month, as would be the case with a regular plane.
Also, you can land it and then drive to your destination, for example. The concept is to replace planes, not cars.
What a terrible article. Trying to instill FOMO just because the Chinese are coming for it!!!!, despite the technology being destined to be exclusively used for rich people's toys.
"This brave new world of personal transport is acting as a great leveller," said aviation consultant Steve Wright.
Compared to cars: Energy consumption is much higher. Physical space use is higher. Material use is higher. Steering difficulty is higher. Insurance rates are going to be much higher. (...)
Trying to instill FOMO just because the Chinese are coming for it!!!
Take a look at the posts OP makes – they seem obsessed with posting negative articles about China.
Flying cars are the stuff politicans love, because they do not have to change anything about car centric infrastructure at all, do not have to buitl public transport and only the rich can afford them. We call the helicopters today.
Germany's Minister of Infrastructure just invested 150Million € into a flying taxi company. Its just helicopters.
What I find really disturbing about this is the fact that so many people fall for this scam.
Career politicians tend to be rich themselves, they can't even imagine someone being unable to afford a flying car.
We've had viable "flying cars" since the 70s. We call them helicopters.
Unfortunately for the futurists, there is a major floor with flying cars, and that's the failure mode. If a car breaks down, it stops. If 2 cars crash, they come to a stop, generally in the road. If a helicopter breaks down, it will have a very bad time, even in the best case. If 2 helicopters crash, then both will almost certainly plummet to their doom, as well as risking those below them.
Because of this, the regulations are a lot stricter on flying cars. This makes them a lot less practical or economically viable. Any other variant will run into the same limitations.
Helicopters have been around for much longer than that, as early as 1906 apparently. The first mass produced helicopter was the Sikorsky R-4, introduced in 1943
They successfully unloaded their failed company on some greater fool. These things will never be viable for anything other than being rich people toys.
They're not even great toys though.
But you can use it to show off to your "friends", so what makes it worthwhile to them.
China is the best chance for it to succeed though. It would be far more expensive to gain regulatory approval across dozens of western countries than to just bribe a bunch of CCP regulators and gain domestic access to millions of millionaires in one of the largest countries on Earth.
But after a few of those fall from the sky, bribes won't help any more.
At least they bought the tech this time instead of just copying it. Shame for us though
The Chinese have copied car-building techniques through the JVs Western companies established in China. However, the Chinese have also been heavily funding research into batteries and electric cars for decades. So, to a much larger degree the electric bits are actually their own inventions.
A "flying car" is just a small, cheap plane/helicopter/quadcopter
You forgot the crucial aspect of the flying car concept. Privately owned flying cars are flown by unqualified idiots instead of qualified pilots and get basically no maintenance of safety inspections compared to planes and helicopters.
It's not a flying car, it's a shitty car that can with some effort be turned into a rather shitty airplane. At that point it's functionally an airplane, doing everything an (shitty) airplane can do and none of the things a car can do. When it's turned into a car again it can do none of the airplane things and only do everything a (shitty) car can do.
Calling it a flying car is just playing on peoples fictional vision of what a flying car is and then leaves them disappointed when they see this thing.
Not to say it isn't a marvelous piece of engineering and deserving of admiration for this, but more in the way we admire a piece of art.
