

Sky Driving - Terrafugia Transition, a viable "roadable aircraft" - frisco
http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2009/03/26/sky-driving

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ShabbyDoo
I don't understand how the market for this will be large enough to justify the
investment. Let's determine our market size by the process of elimination:

\- Executives who value their time can't justify this. You have to fly it
yourself, so you can't use the trip to get work done. And, you have to become
a pilot, another time drain. Furthermore, the range is an issue compared to
even the least costly business jets -- more time drain. And, even though
Eclipse is shutting down, there's a new class of cheaper biz jets available
for rental/frac ownership.

\- A guy who likes to fly on weekends for fun. Why pay more for a more complex
system that you don't need? Just buy a used single-engine Cessna for $40K. At
least the maintenance cost structure is known.

Another article I read (can't remember where) cited the benefit of being able
to land at a regional airport and drive to your meeting. Never mind that the
FBOs all have rental car agencies. [And, they'll drive your car out to the
plane to meet you!] Great, you bought an expensive contraption to save $30 in
rental costs. Oh yeah, you can also drive your plane home if the weather is
bad! So, your market is now the intersection of people who can afford $200K
aircraft and those who don't value their time (biz jets can fly in much more
extreme weather conditions than this thing).

So, what's left? The niche markets described in the article. A vineyard owner
who wants to visit his land. Early adopters. I don't see how the overall
market can exceed a few thousand units. Would this be interesting to people
outside the US? Rich people in under-developed countries? In these cases, one
would think that the ability to drive the plane would be of little interest --
no good roads, therefore no need to drive. You'd probably want to buy designed
for short, dirt runways,

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cameldrv
You're probably right about the market being fairly small, particularly with
the (very) limited performance of the plane. However, there are a lot of
smaller airports that do not have rental cars available. Many small towns also
don't have taxi service available. This literally is probably 3/4 of paved,
public runways that have no rental cars or taxis. I can see it being useful
for say, a small town doctor that serves a different town each day.

That said, if they sold a thousand, I'd say they were doing pretty well.

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marvin
One accident and this company will be history. It isn't technology and
business that holds aviation back, it's bureaucracy, law, regulations and
existing systems. There are way too many actors that have big stakes in the
status quo, on all fronts: existing infrastructure and regulations, money to
be made on lawsuits and people's fear of flight, the huge personal freedom
that comes with flight (leaving the country becomes pretty trivial if there
are small planes everywhere), the tens of thousands of people employed in
traditional aviation, ensuring the continued safe operation of the current
system etc, etc, etc. The technological problems come _on top of_ this, so no
"investor in his right mind" would bet the required amount of money to make an
attempt. You would have to be crazy.

Someday we will look back at this period as the dark age of flight. I'm
annoyed out of my mind; there are hundreds of cool things to work with in this
area.

