Terrafugia was founded in 2006 to combine driving and flying. The founding team includes MIT-trained aerospace engineers and MBAs.
The Transition® is a two-place, fixed wing street legal aircraft that fits in a single car garage and is designed to be flown in and out of general aviation airports. It is designed to be easy and fun to fly and is extremely simple to convert between flying and driving modes.
-RW
(ht LewRockwell.com)
I hope that I am wrong, but I have to wonder how practical this can be in real life. In car mode, would you really feel safe parking this in any parking lot where other people were parking. Dings would be monstrously expensive, and they could even be life-threatening. As an airplane that you didn't build from a kit, the only maintenance items the pilot can do are a few things like changing the oil, lightbulbs, some cosmetic interior work, and maybe the side glass. Everything else will cost $70-$100/hr, and I suspect the maintenance will be higher since driving will be much more wear-inducing than flying.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, there would be a pretty large monthly savings just being able to drive the plane home and parking it in the garage. At the airport where I used to have an airplane, so-called "T-hangars" were $700 and up per month -- and that airport was by no means the most expensive in Southern California. Even a tiedown in the sun was over $100/month.
But think of the chicks you'd get with a flying car!
DeleteI think this is probably one of those high dollar toys where if you have to worry what it costs to park it, you probably can't afford it anyway.
Once Amazon masters drone delivery, they will have pretty strong claim to moving peopele through air, too, I think the first application will be an air-bus, similar to how water taxis avoid congested roads.
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