Question
Why don't we have flying cars?
Answer
There have literally been DOZENS of working prototypes that solved the technical problem. You can see some of the more famous ones at air museums. Here's a picture of one I took at the Udvar-Hazy museum near Dulles, in DC.
This "airphibian" was designed to land at small airports, detach the back section and drive off like a car, thereby eliminating the need for a rental car.
Many such designs have been proposed.
The problem isn't the technology, cost or affordability. It is a mix of marketing and regulatory issues.
Marketing: if you think about it, there really aren't that many use cases this flying car idea fits. Private helicopters, chauffeured limousines and exec jets take away most of the potential market. Leaving only rich hobbyists living and working in peculiar geographies where the other solutions are worse.
Regulatory: The FAA simply does NOT want the nightmare of huge numbers of poorly-trained amateur pilots flying around. The air traffic control system is already an overburdened mess. Air cars would require the creation of a whole new layer of management (probably under 10,000 feet) and policing of no-fly zones etc. with respect to commercial and military routes. While systems have been proposed for interstate highway type systems in the sky (a la the Star Wars movies), they would require very complex infrastructure innovations and a good deal of automation to be safe.
That last point is actually very important. For most routine applications, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are far safer than piloted ones. There is currently a serious struggle going on to get the FAA to ease up on restrictions and allow UAVs to share airspace with piloted vehicles. But thanks to a lot of irrationalities, people just don't trust unmanned vehicles flying around. These fears (mostly variants of "if things fail, who can we sue?") prevented even the ground version (the automated highway system, AHS, in California) from being realized. Automation would help make roads safer and more efficient, and make air cars possible.
So if you want to make this vision a reality, help out by first supporting the case for automated vehicles to share roads with humans. Next, get UAVs free to fly the air. Then we'll talk air cars.
This "airphibian" was designed to land at small airports, detach the back section and drive off like a car, thereby eliminating the need for a rental car.
Many such designs have been proposed.
The problem isn't the technology, cost or affordability. It is a mix of marketing and regulatory issues.
Marketing: if you think about it, there really aren't that many use cases this flying car idea fits. Private helicopters, chauffeured limousines and exec jets take away most of the potential market. Leaving only rich hobbyists living and working in peculiar geographies where the other solutions are worse.
Regulatory: The FAA simply does NOT want the nightmare of huge numbers of poorly-trained amateur pilots flying around. The air traffic control system is already an overburdened mess. Air cars would require the creation of a whole new layer of management (probably under 10,000 feet) and policing of no-fly zones etc. with respect to commercial and military routes. While systems have been proposed for interstate highway type systems in the sky (a la the Star Wars movies), they would require very complex infrastructure innovations and a good deal of automation to be safe.
That last point is actually very important. For most routine applications, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are far safer than piloted ones. There is currently a serious struggle going on to get the FAA to ease up on restrictions and allow UAVs to share airspace with piloted vehicles. But thanks to a lot of irrationalities, people just don't trust unmanned vehicles flying around. These fears (mostly variants of "if things fail, who can we sue?") prevented even the ground version (the automated highway system, AHS, in California) from being realized. Automation would help make roads safer and more efficient, and make air cars possible.
So if you want to make this vision a reality, help out by first supporting the case for automated vehicles to share roads with humans. Next, get UAVs free to fly the air. Then we'll talk air cars.