
Flying-car venture Terrafugia expands workforce - prostoalex
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2018/april/11/flying-car-venture-terrafugia-expands-workforce
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ashleyn
We've had a "flying car" for generations. It's called the helicopter. It was
even able to land on top of Pan Am's headquarters in NYC.

The problem, of course, is the high level of training required to operate such
a vehicle, plus the cost of the vehicle itself.

"Flying car" was never a technical impossibility. It was an economic
challenge. "Flying cars" are 50-year long hype.

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asynchronous13
High level of training is no longer required. Anyone can use a PS2 joystick to
fly ours: [https://youtu.be/b7SjOOuTct0](https://youtu.be/b7SjOOuTct0)

You're right of course, that the economic challenge still exists. This one
burns about $100/hr worth of fuel, and there's other maintenance costs on top
of that.

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scottie_m
The real issue is that if you did solve those problems you’d be left with the
truth that we don’t want thousands of noisy “flying cars” buzzing around,
polluting, and occasionally falling on our heads. Flying cars don’t scale. If
you took a significant percentage of ground traffic into the sky, it would be
an absolute nightmare.

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ilamont
I saw a presentation by the founder six or seven years ago. At the time, they
had working, flying prototypes that were being tested around northern NY and
New England
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnF2yua4KIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnF2yua4KIw)).
The idea then was the wings would fold up so you could drive it to and from a
standard home garage to the airfield, and then start flying.

Clearly there were some major regulatory hurdles they were working through
related to licensing and other FAA requirements, but (according to the CEO)
they had customers ready to buy and start using them.

The new TF-X model looks a lot slicker, and uses computer-assisted VTOL:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHJTZ7k0BXU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHJTZ7k0BXU)

Curious to see how this plays out under new ownership.

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jamestimmins
This class of flying car has never made much sense to me. It has to follow
auto and aircraft regulations, with multiple different propulsion systems for
different types of travel. Why not just focus on creating a small, autonomous,
VTOL aircraft (an enormously hard problem by itself), and then assume the
rider will use ride share or public transit for the last mile.

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romwell
Because hangars are pricey.

The whole point of the roadable aircraft is that you don't have to rely on
airport infrastructure.

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asynchronous13
Hangers are insignificant compared to the cost of fuel. 1 month of hangar cost
is a couple hours of fuel cost.

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FabHK
I dislike the confusion between “flying car” as

1) a hybrid vehicle that can both drive on ordinary roads and fly

2) an aircraft that is as easy to fly as a car (is to drive), and possibly
doesn’t require a runway to operate.

The Terrafugia Transition is an example of the former, but the category has
been around for a long time, though without any really convincing entries in
my view. Maybe the compromises required are still too great.

Many exciting developments are happening in the latter category, specifically
in the subcategory that I like to call “PEVA”, namely personal electric VTOL
aircraft, for example the Volocopter. That category has arisen because of the
improvements in avionics and battery tech. It’ll be exciting to watch what
happens there.

I wonder whether Terrafugia’s TF-2 falls in the second category.

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pankajdoharey
Frankly i dont want humans to be flying a car, i want them to be driven
automatically using software. A self driving flying Taxi of sort.

