The vehicle, certified for airworthiness and flight-tested over 170 hours with more than 500 takeoffs and landings, is now headed for mass production.
Jesus fuck please tell me that’s a typo and they left some zeros off. Your average commercial pilot has more than that before any airline is even willing to consider hiring them, that is absolutely not sufficient testing.
Still, early adopters may face bureaucratic turbulence. Potential buyers must be both licensed drivers and certified pilots.
No shit. And that is never going to change, becoming a certified pilot is a lot fuckin harder than getting a driver’s license, and for very good reasons. If some BMW-driving cunt can’t even be arsed to use his turn signal do you really want to ease the “bureaucratic turbulence” just so he can fuck up and crash into a packed airliner? These things still have to use runways, the people flying them still need to know how to behave themselves at airports, how to identify and avoid restricted airspace, how to communicate with ATC and how to behave if (let’s be honest, when) they get Intercepted.
And all of this so you can have a car that’s worse at being a car, and an airplane that’s worse at being an airplane, but hey at least you won’t have to book a rental car at your destination airport, which I remind you they still have to use.
As long as they’re only using smaller airports. Let the millionaires and billionaires have this. It’s like another ocean gate scenario.
I agree with everything you’re saying though haha.
The ocean depths arent above innocent people’s heads.
Mass-Produced
I want to see these masses who can pay the million :)
A million doesn’t get you what it used to, and you’d be shocked at how many quiet millionaires there are out there.
There might be a lot more millionaires than before, but it’d still be a much smaller number who could drop $1M on a flying car.
It’s cheaper than a private jet and there are LOADS of them buzzing around polluting the skies.
Way more expensive than most private aircraft, though.
I’m still of an opinion that private aircraft is for sports and for farmers and for doctors\firefighters\rescuers in remote areas like rural Siberia. And, of course, for people wiping their ass with money.
It’s unfortunately not the same as having a spaceship in some sci-fi universe. The word “ship” hints why, the legal infrastructure, the expenses and most of all required qualifications make flying a plane more demanding.
I don’t see how making a weird car-like plane changes that.
A million and get a pilot licence.
I mean you can get a licence for 20-30k, the maintenance is deadly on a plane though, you could buy a very nice car each year on that money.
I’d rather have a FLDSMDFR. Sorry not sorry. People already drive like ass on the road. I don’t need that in the sky.
I think I’d like to have the full alphabet instead.
“The AirCar fulfills a lifelong dream to bring the freedom of flight into the hands of everyday people.”
The price? Between $800,000 and $1 million, depending on specs.
Don’t forget the cost and time investment in getting your pilots licence.
Also there is no way this is going to be legal to drive on public roads in most countries - just look at the massive tail boom that sticks out. This is just a fancy aircraft for people that want an overcomplicated Cessna.
What’s crazy is you can build a kit plane for less than what this costs, and flying a kit plane does NOT need a pilot license in the US.
Woah woah woah. Not even close to true. The only things you can fly without a license is a single seat ultralight, paramotor, and similar things that most people would barely think of as a plane. There are very specific and restrictive requirements, both on the aircraft and what you can do with it.
Anything bigger, homebuilt or not, will require a LSA license at least ans many (if not most) a full PPL.
Then that’s changed since the last time I toyed with the idea. Which, granted, was probably 20 years ago…
It’s not a flying car. It’s an airplane.
