January 1, 2014 • 43 mins
What's up with flying cars? It's time to talk about the challenges of bringing a real flying car to the consumer market. Will we ever see one?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, Hey there be one, and welcome to Forward
Thank read the podcast that looks at the future and
says the power of love is a curious thing. I'm
John Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocalbon, I'm Joe McCormick. What what
(00:22):
was the Oh no, it's okay, we're going back to
the future. Yeah, we're going back to the future. Gonna
go back in time, Yes we are. What we're not
talking about time machines today. That will be a future
podcast or maybe a past one. But no, today we're
gonna talk about flying cars. I was trying to render
the future perfect tints of mind blown, mind will be blown,
(00:45):
mind will have been will have been blown? Yeah? Okay, okay, okay.
Flying cars the ultimate futurism cliche, right, articles magazine covers
that you know, you tube videos. Where's my flying car?
I thought it would be the future. Where when am
I going to get my flying car? Well, today we're
(01:06):
finally going to talk about it, So let's talk a
little bit about first of all, the the whole science
fiction angle of this. I mean, clearly, like when when
I say when you hear the term flying car, what
is it that you think of? Like, what's what's the
thing that pops into your head? Blade Runner? Blade Runner
a combination of like the Jetsons and the Fifth Element,
(01:26):
which probably explains a lot about me. See, I always
think of Back to the Future, but but I totally
I've seen all the other ones you've mentioned, and all
of those also are somewhere in there. I mean, I
love the design a blade Runner, and I love how
how grungy the flying cars are in Fifth Element. Yeah,
they're so grungy in all these movies. You wonder like,
(01:47):
why why hasn't haven't people just been completely disgusted by
the idea of flying cars. The idea of it is
so novel, or at least you would think it's novel.
As it turns out, the idea of a flying car
is pretty old. We'll get into that. Uh. The idea
is novel enough in the sense that we don't have
flying cars everywhere that I think people are still fascinated
(02:07):
by it. But they love this idea of a future
where flying cars are not only a reality, they've been
around long enough to become mundane. And I mean, it
seems so easy just if you don't know anything. Sure,
you just look at it, like we've had airplanes and
cars for a hundred years before. Particle physics seems really
(02:28):
easy if you don't know anything. Divorced from reality, science
is fun. Um well, science is fun anyway. And and
also I mean that I don't think that anyone who
drives has ever not had many moments in a day
where they're just sitting in traffic and it's terrible and
you you just wish that you could just rise up
on jets and just fly right over the rest of
(02:48):
the rest of the grid. Luck. Yeah, No, that's that's
a captivating well, especially if you live someplace like Atlanta
or Los Angeles, someplace that is known for terrible traffic,
and you get into that, you know, it's it's a Thursday,
and it's the fourth straight day in a row, and
you cannot you can see the exit that you need
to take, and you know it's gonna be another hour
(03:09):
before you can actually get there. Yes, exactly. Yeah, so
and that's those days. You can easily imagine a world where, um,
you know, a flying car would be welcomed with great
acclaim by the entire populace. Because it would, at least
in theory, mean you would no longer be stuck on
(03:30):
this road, stuck behind everybody else. And like we mentioned,
you know, people have thought that this was a pretty
cool thing for an extremely long time. Right. Um, I
think the concept came up really just after the invention
of both cars and also airplanes. Yeah. Yeah, in fact, uh,
I mean no, no, less of an authority than Henry
Ford commented on this, right yeah in ninety he said,
(03:54):
quote mark my words, a combination airplane and motor car.
It's coming. You may smile, but it will come. Yeah.
So if you look at the history of of cars,
and you look at the history of airplanes, and then
you look at the history of people trying to make cars,
what are airplanes? Uh? It turns out Henry Ford was
kind of behind the times, actually, So you gotta go
(04:17):
all the way back. So five is really when you
get the You get Carl Friedrich Benz, who created the
first guest line powered automobile. Uh. And then you jump
ahead to nineteen o three and that's when the Right
Brothers had their famous flight, which, depending upon which authority
you're looking at, was the first heavier than air aircraft
that was able to fly the first fixed wing control,
(04:41):
fixed wing powered heavier than aircraft as opposed to say,
a balloon or something like yeah and eve, And even
then you have people saying actually, but anyway, nineteen o
three was widely recognized as the first airplane flight. Well,
you don't don't have to wait until nineteen seventeen. So
just a little over decade later, when Glenn Curtis had
(05:03):
suggested creating something he called the Curtis auto plane, which
would have been more or less a plane that you
could drive around. And in fact, a lot of the
early flying car concepts were this level, right, this model.
Even even these days, I mean we do have technically
flying cars, but all of them are really more drivable planes. Yeah,
(05:25):
they're really airplanes that have detachable elements to them, and
then you drive the vehicle out to an airstrip attach
whatever those elements are. Usually it's wings and the propeller
and maybe some other elements as well, and then you
you take off as if it were just a regular
light aircraft. Right. So, uh, you know a lot of
the early ones. Robert Edison Fulton Jr. Created one a
(05:48):
year later, uh, consolidated vaulty developed the conveir Car, which
was a two door sedan with detachable airplane unit that
you could convert into a plane. Um. These were all
vehicles that were kind of built in the prototype stage,
never went into actual manufacture due to various problems, either
financial or technological. So for example, Robert Dyson Fulton couldn't
(06:13):
get UM funding, so I could never really go into production.
Whereas the convert Car crashed on its third test flight
and that pretty much killed the project because yeah, no,
no one wanted to risk the money in it, and uh,
you know, risk is a big thing. In nineteen sixty five,
you have Paul Muller who introduces the x M two,
which was the first prototype of his sky car concept,
(06:36):
which is like, it reads like a comedy of errors
if you go through the whole ordeal, right yeah, yeah,
this is one where the idea was pretty cool. It
was supposed to be a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle,
which is going to be something we'll talk about little
bit later to that will be ready in time for woodstock,
you know. But the idea was that it was going
(06:57):
to be this thing that could take off from anywhere
and land practically anywhere. With enough clearance obviously, but that
you wouldn't have to go to like an airstrip necessarily,
and it was going to run on fuel that was
similar to airplane fuel, and uh, you know, it was
a project that was kicking around. Even as late as
two thousand three. They had a demonstration of a vehicle,
(07:20):
but it really just kind of hovered it and fly
and um by two thousand nine, there still wasn't a
flying car to show off, and the company at that
point had spent around a hundred million dollars in investment
capital trying to do this and had not created a
successful car over four decades since. Yeah, can I say, honestly,
when I look at pictures of this, it looks to
(07:42):
me like they were just trying to create something that
looked like what you imagine when you think of a
flying car. So in other words, you think they were
just kind of like from the appearance, you look at
and you think, oh, that thing is meant to fly,
But then you start to think, wait, how would that
actually work? It looks like a sci fi illustration. It does.
And eventually Mueller would go and file for Chapter eleven protection,
(08:04):
so bankruptcy protection. But the company itself is still operating,
although in a much more limited capacity. So, you know,
there were a lot of other attempts to create a
flying car that all met with you know, kind of
limited success if any. Most of them didn't go beyond
the prototype stage, or they had very modest flying capabilities,
(08:28):
like it was more that they had a giant parachute
and could use a fan to paraglide as opposed to
powered flight the way we would think of like with
a propeller or jet engine or something like that. Uh,
there are a couple of companies that are still working
quite hard to try and bring a true flying car
to the market. Uh there's the aero Mobile V two
(08:50):
point five, which was a propeller driven aircraft that also
acts like a car. So again more in the lines
of those early designs where you have the plane that
kind of strips down and then becomes a vehicle. Yeah,
you have to take it to the airport or something
like an airport in order to get in the air, right.
And then there's a Terrafugia that is planning on bringing
a car called the Transition to market by two thousand
(09:13):
and fifteen. Now this one, again is another one of
those where you would have to take it to an
airstrip in order to take off, and you would have
to have a pilot's license in order to operate it,
because I like sportcraft license. Yeah. Yeah, well, and we'll
talk more about that in a bit too. But it's
not the kind of vehicle that you would you know,
pull out of the garage and then lift off the
driveway and blast off into towards your your workplace, right. No,
(09:38):
I mean that's really the key here, and it's something
we're going to talk about in a bit. But the
problem is so many of these prototypes we've seen so far, well,
you know, it's it's an airplane and it's a car,
but it's not really what people are thinking about when
they think about a flying car. That certainly includes vt
O L vertical takeoff and landing. It's something that you
(09:59):
can lead you from your driveway and go across town.
It's got versatility like a flying car. I think in
the way we think of as as far as you know,
the science fiction approach goes means that you can, you know,
you can go from point A to point B without
having to go to an airstrip. On either side of it, uh,
that anyone would be able to operate it easily, because
(10:20):
you know, if you have to go through you, if
you have to jump through hoops in order to get
certification for it, then that's obviously a barrier that it
would eventually be affordable so that the average person could
own it. I mean, we look at these science fiction
futures and everyone's got a flying car. No one's driving
a vehicle that is on the ground. So therefore, in
that world, a flying car has to be around the
(10:43):
same level of affordability as your personal vehicles are today.
And and furthermore, something that not only flies that well,
but also drives as fast as you could possibly want
it to drive. Right, So it's not like it's not like, well,
on the ground, it's got a top speed of thirty
months per hour. Yeah, yeah, which is the case of
lots of these practical examples that we've been talking about
that are coming out or in prototype stage anyway these days. Right,
(11:04):
And the extremely simple requirement of it just needs to
fit the normal dimensions of a car. Right, have wings
or propellers or something poking out that's going to knock
other cars windows off as it passes among the You
can't park it anywhere, right, Yeah, so Tarafuccia is working
on well, at least they have a concept. It's not
(11:27):
even a prototype, it's a concept vehicle called t f X.
So this hasn't gone any further than the design, the
initial design phase, as far as I am able to determine. No,
but not at all. If there's any player in the
game right now, it's probably them. Yeah, if we're talking
about a vehicle that the average consumer could use, and
and it's because the t FX answers a lot of
(11:49):
the questions, or at least is going to, assuming that
it it comes out the way the concept is designed,
it will answer a lot of these challenges we're bringing
up right now, assuming that everything works a lot of assumptions. Yeah, well,
I mean they're they're talking about that vertical takeoff and
landing um. And they're talking about a lot of automation,
which is another thing, which is basically the second element
that the three of us think is pretty important in
(12:12):
getting this entire flying car thing off the ground. I
didn't mean to, I tried not. I think it's I
I do think it's the kind of thing that will
be required in order for this idea to get any altitude.
I mean, for this thing to launch, it's going to
have to be automated. Okay, let's let's break it down,
all right's free. What are the major concerns with a
flying car? What are they gonna have? What are the
(12:34):
challenges they're going to have to answer before it is
at all feasible for people like you and me. So
here's one concern, Joe. You know, it takes a lot
of energy to maintain flight, right, It's not like I
mean we can look to nature and see that this
is the case, that it's not something that's a low
energy kind of activity, even if you have the biological
(12:57):
design for lack of a better word, to fly, Well, yeah,
I mean it's hard. It takes more energy to jump
than to take a step. So in order to get
a vehicle into the air, it's going to require a
great deal of energy, which in turn means you have
to get that energy from someplace. So if it's a
vehicle that's running on fuel, there are fuel uh considerations
(13:18):
you have to you have to worry about how much
fuel do you need to actually get the power that
you're that's necessary to get into flight and operates safely, right,
and and the amount of fuel. Okay, let's let's take
for example, the Tarafugia transition and like a camera Okay,
you're you're talking for for the transition that that light
sport craft that they're thinking of releasing like like under
(13:42):
a thousand pounds and a twenty three gallon tank. A
camera weighs like three thousand pounds and only has a
seventeen gallon tank. That's the kind of kind of just
difference in raw gas power that you're talking about, right, right, Yeah,
it's I mean, that's you know, it's it's a big concern.
And so along with just fuel consumption, that adds into
(14:02):
a couple of other things you have to worry about,
like emissions, What what kind of fuel are you burning?
What sort of emissions are coming out of this car?
You don't want it to end up being a really, uh,
the high pollution style mode of transportation because that's something
that we don't want, right, And and also the expense
of that kind of fuel. I mean, these days a
lot of light sport craft can use auto gas rather
(14:25):
than airplane gas. Um. But it's I mean that's not
really more and more we're going like, maybe electric engines
are the way to go because this entire fossil fuel
thing is an issue. Now. There are some designs that
have proposed using a hybrid approach where you have some
fuel for anything that requires a lot of energy, specifically
taking off and landing. Those tend to require a lot
(14:48):
of energy to do safely. But then once you reach
some form of of cruising altitude and speed, switching over
to electric motors which would allow you to conserve fuel
that way and also cut down on emissions, depending upon,
of course, where you get your electricity, because as we
all know, it's not just a closed system where you know,
(15:09):
all the electrictity magically comes from a place where pollution
is just a bad Yeah. I think we should also
think about the concerns that are involved specifically in vt
O L and will takeoff and landing um. So one
of the first things is simply safety. Turns out, vertical
(15:31):
takeoff and landing is not easy, not just from like
a fuel consumption standpoint, but it's difficult to do in
terms of maneuvering of the aircraft. Uh, and it has
caused a lot of safety problems in the past. That
the Harrier jumped jet. So that was a vertical takeoff
and landing jet that was powered by a vector thrust
turbo fan engine. So basically it sucked air through the
(15:54):
body of the airplane and could point it downwards to
lift itself up vertically. But the thing is, um harrier
jumped jets. While they could take off vertically, that was
not ideal. It was avoided under all circumstances, except when
it was absolutely necessary for emergency. I mean, what that
sounds like to me is that you're you're lighting a
fire directly underneath yourself and really hoping that the liftoff
(16:18):
created from it is going to get you out of
the way of the fire. You're, yeah, it's sort of.
I mean it's um so it's difficult to do. You
could take off from like an aircraft carrier that way
or something like that. I mean, the whole concept was
so that a jet would be able to take off
our land anywhere in the in case of nuclear war,
which would end up you know, targeting military instace exactly. Yeah,
(16:41):
you could. You could keep these things in a park
somewhere or whatever, you know, wouldn't it wouldn't have to
be But as it turned out, it was really hard
to do. Yeah, and so that was considered an accident
prone aircraft. There were a lot of incidents involving the
Harrier family and it was basically a dangerous aircraft. There's
an other one, more recent, the bel V twenty two Osprey,
(17:04):
which also has a reputation for being unsafe. Yeah, it
has a very controversial safety record. So it had an
early test period between two thousand, there were four osprey crashes. Uh,
and together those killed a total of thirty people. And
so the the airplane has been redesigned and so oh sorry,
let me explain. The osprey is a tilted rotor, so
(17:27):
that's a different method of vertical takeoff and landing. What
what that is is you imagine like a prop plane
has two propellers out on the wings. Now a normal
plane those would just be forward facing to generate forward
thrust and that would that would lift a plane once
you get enough velocity on a runway. But the way
of the twenty two osprey works is they start off
(17:49):
pointing up helicopter wings themselves tilt up so that the
propellers are facing like helicopter rotors. Yeah, so it uses
that to lift up off the ground and then it
can convert into horizontal plane flight as it's coming into
the air, so like the like the shield Hell Carrier. Yeah,
so there it did get a redesign, and it has
(18:11):
at least on paper, been safer since then. But I
know there's still controversy, was like how these accidents are classified.
There's also a scandal about officers military officers um asking
for maintenance records to be falsified so that it would
give the osprey a more favorable maintenance record and make
(18:32):
it look less prone for accidents mistakes. Yeah, essentially, what
I've read is that some people allege that things that
may have been problems with the airplane have been classified
as pilot errors to be but we we don't know,
I mean, to be fair, anything that's involved with you know,
a one or two rotor aircraft is incredibly challenging to fly.
(18:54):
I mean helicopters. You'll you'll hear pilots who have flown
both airplanes and helicopters talk about how helicopter ers are
really tricky, Like it's it's not something that's easy to
pick up, even if you're an accomplished pilot with a
with an airplane and so one way that these flying cars,
if they are ever made, could maybe get around that
(19:15):
is by having multiple rotors to add more stability. You know,
with a two rotor system, it's it's definitely less stable
that you see. Some of the drones UH and UH
and even remote controlled drones out there that are for
consumer use had between four and eight rotors to provide
that kind of level of stability. Definitely. Uh. Yeah. Another
(19:36):
concern with the vt O L technology is, as we
were just talking about fuel consumption, that uh uses more
fuel than a regular takeoff and that's one of the reasons, say,
like a Harrier, when it wanted to take off, even
though it was capable of vertical takeoff, they would do
a short runway takeoff sometimes just because that used less fuel.
(19:57):
And then not only that, but it's it tends to
be really noisy. Yeah, we all aircraft tend to be
really noisy, and so that's a big problem. Imagine you're
trying to say, well, okay, I want to pull out
into my driveway on the way to work in the
morning and take off. So if you ever heard a
helicopter takeoff or an airplane you know close, that's what
(20:22):
your neighbor next door is going to be hearing when
you do this. Now, hopefully they can. Because it's a
smaller aircraft, it will probably be less loud than you know,
like a Boeing taking off or something. Would hope, Um,
but still, you know, there's always gonna be that one guy. Yeah,
it's still I can't imagine that they're going to be
(20:42):
able to make it as quiet as just like a car,
so and and then and there. You won't. I don't
think you'll ever have a time where you'll be able
to just take off directly from your driveway. That's exactly right.
I think that the idea that you can do that
is just probably not gonna happen. Now you I can
imagine we might have vertical takeoff flying cars where you
(21:03):
don't have to go to the airport and get runway access,
but you will have say like a launching area, launch
designated area, because you would you would want to have
enough clearance on all sides so that you're not worried
about banging into a house, building, a tree, a power line,
any of that kind of stuff. Even even Tara Fuji
(21:23):
is kind of optimistic. Estimate is that it would take
a hundred feet or thirty meter diameter fifty feet on
all sides. Yeah, I think that's pretty standard idea of
you need at least that much just for safety and clearance. Yeah. Yeah,
So in that case, what you would have is a
designated spot where your multi rotor, which could become in
(21:45):
the form of tilted rotors, it could be we we
haven't even discussed like what form that this would take,
mostly because we don't have a lot of examples to
point out that. There are a lot of different proposals.
Tara Fuji is ideas tilted rotors. So it's like the
V twenty two osprey. It has blades that point up
when you're you're picking up, so it's like a helicopter
that lifts you off the ground and then they transition
(22:05):
over to provide forward thrust when you're flying. Um. But
there are there are other ideas you could use, like
ducted fans. That's one idea. I think that's what the
Moller skycar us I believe. So yeah, technically you could
also have even a jet engine on one of these
things that I don't imagine that we're kind of see
(22:25):
that anytime soon. But there are unmanned aerial vehicles that
use that kind of approach where they've got either a
combination of rotors and jet engine, or some of them
just have the jet engine because they launch straight from
another aircraft. But I don't we're gonna have cars that
launch off of, you know, another flying vehicle, unless unless
it happens to have the shield logo on it, in
(22:47):
which case I totally makes sense. Now, one thing you
you mentioned about noise pollution, I this is funny because
it would kind of go the opposite of what you
were saying about the hybrid fuel use, like, Okay, well
it'll use fuel for for takeoff because that's the harder task,
and then it will use an electric motor to power
(23:08):
it during flight. That does make a lot of sense.
But also I wonder if you could help fight the
noise problem if you could say, well, is it possible
to do electric takeoff? I really based upon our battery
technology right now, I'm really skeptical of that. I don't
think you would be able to get enough juice to
(23:28):
do it without having a vehicle so heavy that you
have defeated the purpose because you had to carry so
much battery power on board your car to to be
able to handle that. I think you're almost forced to
go with the fuel approach for takeoff and landing for
an average vehicle. I mean, I suppose you could try.
(23:50):
But unless you're unless you're doing a aircraft approach type thing,
like on an airstrip where it is the it requires
less energy than vertical takeoff and landing, I don't know
that you could get the vehicle light enough for you
to be able to do that reliably. Uh that is
that is one of the things that Tarafugia is promising
on this pie in the sky, an electric political I
(24:13):
think that's how they're planning to get past the noise pollution. Yeah,
that's to I mean, I mean, I mean you could
approach it. You could approach it by um focusing on
body designs, so like how light can we get You
have to maybe going with like like uh, you know,
carbon fiber type stuff, lightweight composite materials could maybe like
(24:35):
cut this thing into total minimum body weight. I can
see maybe maybe you just really powerful motor. You have
to make sure that that those a lot of tech
would have to come together in order to make that
anywhere near possible. UM. Not to mention the fact that.
I mean we were talking earlier, you know, like I
(24:55):
don't trust people driving next to me on Peachtree to
to not completely kill me with their suv. I really
don't want that guy in an suv to be fifty
ft above me. Well, I was going to say also
that besides that, with the composite materials, you have to
make sure that they're strong enough to withstand impact. So
you have to they have to still meet all the
impact requirements of your basic cars on the road. So
(25:18):
you have to make sure that whatever material you make
is both light so that you can cut down on
the requirements needed to get it into the air, and
resilience so that if you're in a crash, say just
driving around in regular car mode, that your car doesn't
shred into pieces. Yeah, speaking of crashes and getting on
board with what Lauren just said, I am going to
go on the record and say I do not want
(25:41):
human beings piloting these things. I think these should be
autonomous control or not at all. That that is my vote.
So you're you're you're saying that you want computers to
control this. I mean we've already seen, like with uh
research that came out of Google and other other facilities,
other other like Carmen. You've acturers that autonomous cars already
(26:03):
drive safer than human Yeah. From Google's fleet reports. You
remember that their autonomous cars, they were releasing the safety record,
and it turns out they've had two accidents. One of
the times was when a human was driving the autonomous
it was under manual control. The other time the autonomous
car was not at fault and got rear ended. So yeah,
(26:23):
so in other words, better than never been an accident
after hundreds and hundreds of hours on the roads in California.
No less, there have been no accidents with the car
under autonomous control. And as it turns out, like they've
they've shown that autonomous cars have much better reaction times,
are able to maintain the proper distance between other vehicles
(26:46):
much more effectively than human drivers. So I can see
where you're coming from. And Lauren, I think you agree
with Joe right that autonomous control is really because, I mean,
from what you were saying, you don't want, you know,
Joe SUV to be driving a vehicle directly over your head.
But if it's a computer that's really really good at it,
would you be less? I would be less completely terrified. Um,
(27:09):
but you know, my my terror level just just based
on the technology, I'm not sure. I mean, I don't know.
I can envision a future in which all of this
has come together. All right, I'm coming down against both
of you. Yeah, yeah, No, I'm going to say that
I only want flying cars if they can be controlled manually. Uh,
that's the only way I want it. I don't want
(27:29):
to fly. I want I want to be able to
have the thrill of scaring the heck out of people
by buzzing the Maverick style from top gun, but in
a in a car, I want to have that experience
of feeling like I'm in the fifth element maneuvering this
car through complex city scapes and weaving my way through
(27:52):
alley ways. That a robot lady is going to be
yelling at you about the points on your license. I
want the robot lady is Siri already does that? So
that's fine, that's we've already got that part. That part
of the future is here. So I Well, part of this,
I think is that I'm assuming I said the word
license and and that the license that you would have
(28:13):
to have for this would be a strong piloting license
that you would have had to have received a certain
amount of training for. See. Now, I also like that
because it immediately restricts who else gets the flying car.
And while I am a man of some means, I
would be able to get hold of one of these
flying cars, and thus it would be a status symbol
making me better than everybody else. Can you play video games?
(28:35):
So you clearly already know how to pilot things. As
long as I don't hit the Y button and prematurely
bail out of the car, I'm good. You're good to go. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Well I think you're insane. I I would not let
you near a flying car, especially since you don't even
drive a regular car. No, I would only drive a
flying car. I would. I would shell out the money
(28:59):
to get the license in the car, and then I
would laugh my way all the way to the ground,
burning and fiery death. Here there's where I have to
come out and say that I too, am completely on
board with if if this happens, it has to be autonomous.
I mean, it's it's you, just anecdotally, even without looking
(29:21):
into the actual facts and figures, just from a person's
general experience there's a good chance that all of you
listening to this have either been involved in an accident
or you know someone who has been. And it's one
of those things that's common enough where you know, when
we talk about autonomous cars, we're talking about trying to
take that element out as much as possible and save
(29:42):
human lives, which is, you know, that's something that's really
important to me obviously, and I think for flying cars
to be a reality so that we have this convenience,
but yet we don't have this added risk of people
who could be operating a vehicle under the influence of something.
Maybe there just suffering an impairment of some sort, or
maybe they're just not a good driver that they are
(30:05):
not going to put themselves and other people at risk
with something that is potentially extremely dangerous. I have another question,
Uh huh, how are now normally we think of, oh, man,
I'm gonna get pulled over because I was going five
miles per hour over the speed limit. So annoying. You know,
(30:27):
I'm actually glad there are cops out there policing traffic.
It can it can make you feel inconvenience, but that's
just you being selfish. Who is going to police the
vehicles in the air well, if they're autonomous, that definitely
raises some interesting questions because if there is an error,
who's at fault? Because if it's an autonomous vehicle and
(30:49):
if I hit a if I program in the let's
say it's GPS coordinates for the landing pad that I
want to go to, and as soon as I get
onto the lawn pad, the car takes over and it's
supposed to get me from my point of of departure
to my destination all by itself. If there's some sort
of incident along the way, who's it fault? Well, if
(31:11):
it's autonomous, i'd say the manufacturer. But if it's if
it's if it's you piling it, obviously it's you. I'm
envisioning an incredible future without insurance. Whoa where it's all
just manufacturer liability. This that thought just made me so
gleefully happy. Um, how okay, all that insurance cost just
(31:36):
gets rolled right into the costier vehicle right now. I
could totally deal with that. But but you know, legally speaking,
if it is a vehicle that's under manual control, you
would have to have some sort of special license, right right, okay,
I mean as of right now, in order to fly
a light sport aircraft, which is like what the what
the Terrafugia Transition would fall into the category of Um,
(31:57):
you know it's that's going to be a one to
two seater playing in with a certain limit of size
and power, and you don't you don't need a full
pilot license in order to do that. Basically all you
need is a driver's license and to show up and
prove that you're willing to follow rules. Um. But along
with that, you're not allowed to do things like fly
at night or just you know, like jaunt into any
(32:18):
old airspace that you want. You have to follow very
specific regulations. UM. Once you get a medical certificate, which
is the full f A A approved doctor checking you
out and saying that you're of sound physical and mental
health to fly a plane that could potentially wreck a
lot of stuff. Um, you know that that's within certain classes.
When you start getting into being able to take more
(32:40):
than just one person up in a plane with you
and and fly at night and fly with instrumentation, which
kind of falls under the category of automatic of automated vehicles,
I don't know, so, so it's it's a weird conundrum.
Like I, I can't imagine wanting to allow anyone into
an airplane who has not had those kind of checks
done and training done. But if we're talking about autonomous vehicles,
(33:03):
then I don't know. And so here's a well, let
me offer one more qualification. Um I I imagine people
will need even more certification if we're talking about the
actual flying card, the vertical takeoff and landing, because that
is tricky. Well, even if it's fully automated, I could
easily see there being another level of licenses required to
(33:26):
operate such a vehicle. And uh, and part of that
is just because you know, we're talking about another area
where technology is beginning to outpace the legal system, which
we see all the time, right we all we will
see this where engineers and scientists and researchers come up
with these amazing technologies that raise interesting questions of legality
(33:49):
because the law doesn't apply to that sort of stuff
because no one had thought of it back when they
wrote the laws. We are going to blow up this side. No,
it's gonna be fine. There's not a law against it.
Um So. Honestly, even light sport aircraft, which which covers
a whole lot of different experimental craft that are really
fun that we should totally do a whole episode on sometime. Um.
(34:12):
You know, it's even the laws governing who gets a
license for that are kind of in contention right now
and and are sort of being outdated by the number
of people who are building their own experimental craft. Yes,
so it might be a while before all these questions
are answered, and it may turn out that, you know,
sometimes the law comes up with answers that seem counterintuitive
(34:33):
or that some that will actually prevent an entire technology
from flourishing. So if it ends up that that even
with a fully autonomous flying car, that you have to
have a certain level of pilot's license, clearly that would
be a detriment because there will be a lot of
companies would say, well, you've just eliminated a huge potential
(34:54):
market for us, because not everyone's going to go through
that kind of trouble to be able to operate this
kind of car. Uh so why should we even go
into that business. We're not even gonna bother now. So
it could be, you know, it could be at what
some would refer to as a disincentive. I hate myself
right now. But anyway, that's the you know, that's that's
a concern, right that the law itself, that that even
(35:16):
if we were to meet all the technological challenges there are,
there's the chance that the law could end up preventing
it from flourishing. And and and what about that price point.
I mean, it's we've we've we've been talking a little
bit and during other topics about that. But you know,
like if if a car costs what like thirty thousand dollars,
if it's new days, um, decent average price to just
(35:38):
pull out the air sure um, then uh and and
your average light sport aircraft might cost say a hundred
thousand dollars the number for example, going back to the Terrafugia. Uh,
they're quoting that as a potential seven two seventy nine
thousand dollar cars? Are you talking about the one the transition,
the the likely one, not even the ridic list one, Yeah,
(36:01):
which doesn't have a price attached to it, because it's
just ridiculous. It's kind of a day dream at the moment. YEA,
So two d and seventy nine thousand, when you could
have bought a vehicle and a light aircraft together for
less than that and essentially had all of the capabilities
of the Tera Fugia, with the exception of the fact
that you you would have to keep your light aircraft
(36:21):
probably in a hangar somewhere, or you have to have
a special garage built force to drive your other car
to that to the air to the airstrip. But you
still have to have an airstrip to take off with
that one. So you know, the convenience factor being able
to drive your airplane home might not be enough for
you to say I'm willing to spend another hundred thousand
dollars on that and hundred thousand plus on that. So yeah,
I mean, that's that's expensive. I mean you look at
(36:43):
that vt O L technology and the vehicles that have
it are not cheap. Now that the Harrier is a
little bit different because that's an older aircraft. I mean
that that was developed in the late fifties and they
started building them in the sixties. But when you look
at the Osprey that was that's kind of another one.
Another reason why it's so um uh controversial in various
(37:05):
circles is not just for its safety record, which may
or may not be awful. It all depends upon whom
you ask, but also because it definitely went over what
they had projected it would cost. The original projection for
that program was I think two point five billion dollars,
not chump change, but it turns out that the whole
(37:26):
thing is going to be closer to thirty five point
six billion dollars, which is a big leap. Obviously, every
single asprey costs around oh between sixty million and seventy
million dollars every single one, and there's something like four
d and eight of them that have been ordered to date.
But they're all full of gold toilets. They're not all
(37:49):
full of gold toilets. One gold toilet apiece, you're your
flying car will not need a gold toilet. So no, anyone,
anyone who sees me in my flying car is going
to have need of a goal toilet or at least
a toilet, because that's how I'm gonna fly that sucker.
Um No. But the point I'm trying to make here
is that this technology, while while you know, the the
(38:10):
whole idea behind the osprey was they wanted to have
a vehicle that could uh could land in remote locations
without an airstrip that would be act like a helicopter
whenever it was taking off or landing, but like a
plane in every other case. And it turned out that
achieving that ended up being a lot more complicated and
expensive and dangerous than they had first anticipated. So I
(38:32):
would imagine that same sort of stuff, even though we've
learned a lot since then, that it's still going to
be one of those those technologies that, at least for
the first few implementations, we're going to see some really
expensive vehicles, assuming they ever make it to actual manufacturing lines.
Now Terafugia, for its part, they're saying that they'll be
(38:53):
available by so it's not that long before we should
start seeing these, at least in limited production runs, assuming
that everything goes well. So and I just wonder what
kind of market there is for it. I mean, i'd like,
I really don't think that anyone other than people who
were going to buy a light sport craft anyway are
going to pick These's about to say, I know some
(39:14):
I know some people who have pilot's licenses for light aircraft,
and they also are of a particular tax bracket where
I could see them picking one of these up. Because
I grew up in a part of Georgia that had
a lot of affluent families. I wish I had been
one of them. No, it's fine, I'm okay now that
I'm going to get my manual powered flying car. You
(39:37):
were just turning into a little tyrant today, just imagining
all of the suffering you'll gleefully inflict in the future.
This is the kind of thing that gives people, not
pilot licenses. Actually, that's that's I think. I think that
that showing the glee and other people's terror is what
an f a a doctor you would say, like you're
(39:58):
not allowed ground check or they talk to all his friends.
I'm really good at masking that glee when it comes
down to it. I've never seen you do that, but
you are an actor, so I can. I can totally
fake sincerity. It's the first thing they teach you. Okay, Well,
the future is full of excellence and terror. I think.
(40:18):
I think flying cars, I think are are one of
those things that if we see them, uh, it'll be
in a very limited capacity for the foreseeable future. And
I think for the average consumer, I agree with you guys,
it's got to be automated. It has to be, because
if it's not, then it's just it's just I can't
imagine any company, yeah, taking that on. That's a huge risk, right,
(40:42):
I can't imagine any insurance company offering up insurance for
that future without insurance, but none the way you're talking,
we're talking where you can't get it because no one
will recover you, not that it doesn't exist. So um, yeah,
I think uh, I think will be a while before
we see this. Now, that doesn't mean that maybe maybe
(41:04):
in that magical twenty to fifty year time frame that
we always talk about in the show, we finally start
seeing them. It would be kind of cool. I mean,
I think it would be a neat thing to see. Uh.
And and these autonomous cars, like we said, have been
proven themselves to be really safe, so at least on
a on that level, I can imagine it. I just
don't know what the time. As far as I can tell,
(41:28):
the deal with flying cars is, there's not any magic
element missing. It's just like so many other problems, it's
just a feasibility and economics problem. And how can you
make this not cost of ba jillion dollars and not
you know, super super energy hungry and all those questions. Yeah,
I think that in a good couple of centuries will
(41:49):
totally have them. Yeah. It's funny that it only took
a little more than a decade for someone to first
propose a flying car, and a century later we're still
waiting for one to take off. All right, guys, so
we're wrapping this up now. You know you love the show.
You wouldn't be listening to the show unless you love
the show. So if you love the show, do you
(42:11):
know what you would really love? F W Thinking dot
com because that's a website where we've got all the
videos the podcast like this one. Blog posts articles stuff
where we go into a lot more detail on these
subjects and we talk about stuff that we haven't even
touched on in the podcast. So if you're interested in
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(42:33):
outlets including Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus with the handle
f W Thinking. So get in touch with us, let's
know what you think, and we will talk to you
again really soon. For more on this topic in the
future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com, brought to
(43:02):
you by Toyota. Let's go places
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, Hey there be one, and welcome to Forward
Thank read the podcast that looks at the future and
says the power of love is a curious thing. I'm
John Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocalbon, I'm Joe McCormick. What what
(00:22):
was the Oh no, it's okay, we're going back to
the future. Yeah, we're going back to the future. Gonna
go back in time, Yes we are. What we're not
talking about time machines today. That will be a future
podcast or maybe a past one. But no, today we're
gonna talk about flying cars. I was trying to render
the future perfect tints of mind blown, mind will be blown,
(00:45):
mind will have been will have been blown? Yeah? Okay, okay, okay.
Flying cars the ultimate futurism cliche, right, articles magazine covers
that you know, you tube videos. Where's my flying car?
I thought it would be the future. Where when am
I going to get my flying car? Well, today we're
(01:06):
finally going to talk about it, So let's talk a
little bit about first of all, the the whole science
fiction angle of this. I mean, clearly, like when when
I say when you hear the term flying car, what
is it that you think of? Like, what's what's the
thing that pops into your head? Blade Runner? Blade Runner
a combination of like the Jetsons and the Fifth Element,
(01:26):
which probably explains a lot about me. See, I always
think of Back to the Future, but but I totally
I've seen all the other ones you've mentioned, and all
of those also are somewhere in there. I mean, I
love the design a blade Runner, and I love how
how grungy the flying cars are in Fifth Element. Yeah,
they're so grungy in all these movies. You wonder like,
(01:47):
why why hasn't haven't people just been completely disgusted by
the idea of flying cars. The idea of it is
so novel, or at least you would think it's novel.
As it turns out, the idea of a flying car
is pretty old. We'll get into that. Uh. The idea
is novel enough in the sense that we don't have
flying cars everywhere that I think people are still fascinated
(02:07):
by it. But they love this idea of a future
where flying cars are not only a reality, they've been
around long enough to become mundane. And I mean, it
seems so easy just if you don't know anything. Sure,
you just look at it, like we've had airplanes and
cars for a hundred years before. Particle physics seems really
(02:28):
easy if you don't know anything. Divorced from reality, science
is fun. Um well, science is fun anyway. And and
also I mean that I don't think that anyone who
drives has ever not had many moments in a day
where they're just sitting in traffic and it's terrible and
you you just wish that you could just rise up
on jets and just fly right over the rest of
(02:48):
the rest of the grid. Luck. Yeah, No, that's that's
a captivating well, especially if you live someplace like Atlanta
or Los Angeles, someplace that is known for terrible traffic,
and you get into that, you know, it's it's a Thursday,
and it's the fourth straight day in a row, and
you cannot you can see the exit that you need
to take, and you know it's gonna be another hour
(03:09):
before you can actually get there. Yes, exactly. Yeah, so
and that's those days. You can easily imagine a world where, um,
you know, a flying car would be welcomed with great
acclaim by the entire populace. Because it would, at least
in theory, mean you would no longer be stuck on
(03:30):
this road, stuck behind everybody else. And like we mentioned,
you know, people have thought that this was a pretty
cool thing for an extremely long time. Right. Um, I
think the concept came up really just after the invention
of both cars and also airplanes. Yeah. Yeah, in fact, uh,
I mean no, no, less of an authority than Henry
Ford commented on this, right yeah in ninety he said,
(03:54):
quote mark my words, a combination airplane and motor car.
It's coming. You may smile, but it will come. Yeah.
So if you look at the history of of cars,
and you look at the history of airplanes, and then
you look at the history of people trying to make cars,
what are airplanes? Uh? It turns out Henry Ford was
kind of behind the times, actually, So you gotta go
(04:17):
all the way back. So five is really when you
get the You get Carl Friedrich Benz, who created the
first guest line powered automobile. Uh. And then you jump
ahead to nineteen o three and that's when the Right
Brothers had their famous flight, which, depending upon which authority
you're looking at, was the first heavier than air aircraft
that was able to fly the first fixed wing control,
(04:41):
fixed wing powered heavier than aircraft as opposed to say,
a balloon or something like yeah and eve, And even
then you have people saying actually, but anyway, nineteen o
three was widely recognized as the first airplane flight. Well,
you don't don't have to wait until nineteen seventeen. So
just a little over decade later, when Glenn Curtis had
(05:03):
suggested creating something he called the Curtis auto plane, which
would have been more or less a plane that you
could drive around. And in fact, a lot of the
early flying car concepts were this level, right, this model.
Even even these days, I mean we do have technically
flying cars, but all of them are really more drivable planes. Yeah,
(05:25):
they're really airplanes that have detachable elements to them, and
then you drive the vehicle out to an airstrip attach
whatever those elements are. Usually it's wings and the propeller
and maybe some other elements as well, and then you
you take off as if it were just a regular
light aircraft. Right. So, uh, you know a lot of
the early ones. Robert Edison Fulton Jr. Created one a
(05:48):
year later, uh, consolidated vaulty developed the conveir Car, which
was a two door sedan with detachable airplane unit that
you could convert into a plane. Um. These were all
vehicles that were kind of built in the prototype stage,
never went into actual manufacture due to various problems, either
financial or technological. So for example, Robert Dyson Fulton couldn't
(06:13):
get UM funding, so I could never really go into production.
Whereas the convert Car crashed on its third test flight
and that pretty much killed the project because yeah, no,
no one wanted to risk the money in it, and uh,
you know, risk is a big thing. In nineteen sixty five,
you have Paul Muller who introduces the x M two,
which was the first prototype of his sky car concept,
(06:36):
which is like, it reads like a comedy of errors
if you go through the whole ordeal, right yeah, yeah,
this is one where the idea was pretty cool. It
was supposed to be a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle,
which is going to be something we'll talk about little
bit later to that will be ready in time for woodstock,
you know. But the idea was that it was going
(06:57):
to be this thing that could take off from anywhere
and land practically anywhere. With enough clearance obviously, but that
you wouldn't have to go to like an airstrip necessarily,
and it was going to run on fuel that was
similar to airplane fuel, and uh, you know, it was
a project that was kicking around. Even as late as
two thousand three. They had a demonstration of a vehicle,
(07:20):
but it really just kind of hovered it and fly
and um by two thousand nine, there still wasn't a
flying car to show off, and the company at that
point had spent around a hundred million dollars in investment
capital trying to do this and had not created a
successful car over four decades since. Yeah, can I say, honestly,
when I look at pictures of this, it looks to
(07:42):
me like they were just trying to create something that
looked like what you imagine when you think of a
flying car. So in other words, you think they were
just kind of like from the appearance, you look at
and you think, oh, that thing is meant to fly,
But then you start to think, wait, how would that
actually work? It looks like a sci fi illustration. It does.
And eventually Mueller would go and file for Chapter eleven protection,
(08:04):
so bankruptcy protection. But the company itself is still operating,
although in a much more limited capacity. So, you know,
there were a lot of other attempts to create a
flying car that all met with you know, kind of
limited success if any. Most of them didn't go beyond
the prototype stage, or they had very modest flying capabilities,
(08:28):
like it was more that they had a giant parachute
and could use a fan to paraglide as opposed to
powered flight the way we would think of like with
a propeller or jet engine or something like that. Uh,
there are a couple of companies that are still working
quite hard to try and bring a true flying car
to the market. Uh there's the aero Mobile V two
(08:50):
point five, which was a propeller driven aircraft that also
acts like a car. So again more in the lines
of those early designs where you have the plane that
kind of strips down and then becomes a vehicle. Yeah,
you have to take it to the airport or something
like an airport in order to get in the air, right.
And then there's a Terrafugia that is planning on bringing
a car called the Transition to market by two thousand
(09:13):
and fifteen. Now this one, again is another one of
those where you would have to take it to an
airstrip in order to take off, and you would have
to have a pilot's license in order to operate it,
because I like sportcraft license. Yeah. Yeah, well, and we'll
talk more about that in a bit too. But it's
not the kind of vehicle that you would you know,
pull out of the garage and then lift off the
driveway and blast off into towards your your workplace, right. No,
(09:38):
I mean that's really the key here, and it's something
we're going to talk about in a bit. But the
problem is so many of these prototypes we've seen so far, well,
you know, it's it's an airplane and it's a car,
but it's not really what people are thinking about when
they think about a flying car. That certainly includes vt
O L vertical takeoff and landing. It's something that you
(09:59):
can lead you from your driveway and go across town.
It's got versatility like a flying car. I think in
the way we think of as as far as you know,
the science fiction approach goes means that you can, you know,
you can go from point A to point B without
having to go to an airstrip. On either side of it, uh,
that anyone would be able to operate it easily, because
(10:20):
you know, if you have to go through you, if
you have to jump through hoops in order to get
certification for it, then that's obviously a barrier that it
would eventually be affordable so that the average person could
own it. I mean, we look at these science fiction
futures and everyone's got a flying car. No one's driving
a vehicle that is on the ground. So therefore, in
that world, a flying car has to be around the
(10:43):
same level of affordability as your personal vehicles are today.
And and furthermore, something that not only flies that well,
but also drives as fast as you could possibly want
it to drive. Right, So it's not like it's not like, well,
on the ground, it's got a top speed of thirty
months per hour. Yeah, yeah, which is the case of
lots of these practical examples that we've been talking about
that are coming out or in prototype stage anyway these days. Right,
(11:04):
And the extremely simple requirement of it just needs to
fit the normal dimensions of a car. Right, have wings
or propellers or something poking out that's going to knock
other cars windows off as it passes among the You
can't park it anywhere, right, Yeah, so Tarafuccia is working
on well, at least they have a concept. It's not
(11:27):
even a prototype, it's a concept vehicle called t f X.
So this hasn't gone any further than the design, the
initial design phase, as far as I am able to determine. No,
but not at all. If there's any player in the
game right now, it's probably them. Yeah, if we're talking
about a vehicle that the average consumer could use, and
and it's because the t FX answers a lot of
(11:49):
the questions, or at least is going to, assuming that
it it comes out the way the concept is designed,
it will answer a lot of these challenges we're bringing
up right now, assuming that everything works a lot of assumptions. Yeah, well,
I mean they're they're talking about that vertical takeoff and
landing um. And they're talking about a lot of automation,
which is another thing, which is basically the second element
that the three of us think is pretty important in
(12:12):
getting this entire flying car thing off the ground. I
didn't mean to, I tried not. I think it's I
I do think it's the kind of thing that will
be required in order for this idea to get any altitude.
I mean, for this thing to launch, it's going to
have to be automated. Okay, let's let's break it down,
all right's free. What are the major concerns with a
flying car? What are they gonna have? What are the
(12:34):
challenges they're going to have to answer before it is
at all feasible for people like you and me. So
here's one concern, Joe. You know, it takes a lot
of energy to maintain flight, right, It's not like I
mean we can look to nature and see that this
is the case, that it's not something that's a low
energy kind of activity, even if you have the biological
(12:57):
design for lack of a better word, to fly, Well, yeah,
I mean it's hard. It takes more energy to jump
than to take a step. So in order to get
a vehicle into the air, it's going to require a
great deal of energy, which in turn means you have
to get that energy from someplace. So if it's a
vehicle that's running on fuel, there are fuel uh considerations
(13:18):
you have to you have to worry about how much
fuel do you need to actually get the power that
you're that's necessary to get into flight and operates safely, right,
and and the amount of fuel. Okay, let's let's take
for example, the Tarafugia transition and like a camera Okay,
you're you're talking for for the transition that that light
sport craft that they're thinking of releasing like like under
(13:42):
a thousand pounds and a twenty three gallon tank. A
camera weighs like three thousand pounds and only has a
seventeen gallon tank. That's the kind of kind of just
difference in raw gas power that you're talking about, right, right, Yeah,
it's I mean, that's you know, it's it's a big concern.
And so along with just fuel consumption, that adds into
(14:02):
a couple of other things you have to worry about,
like emissions, What what kind of fuel are you burning?
What sort of emissions are coming out of this car?
You don't want it to end up being a really, uh,
the high pollution style mode of transportation because that's something
that we don't want, right, And and also the expense
of that kind of fuel. I mean, these days a
lot of light sport craft can use auto gas rather
(14:25):
than airplane gas. Um. But it's I mean that's not
really more and more we're going like, maybe electric engines
are the way to go because this entire fossil fuel
thing is an issue. Now. There are some designs that
have proposed using a hybrid approach where you have some
fuel for anything that requires a lot of energy, specifically
taking off and landing. Those tend to require a lot
(14:48):
of energy to do safely. But then once you reach
some form of of cruising altitude and speed, switching over
to electric motors which would allow you to conserve fuel
that way and also cut down on emissions, depending upon,
of course, where you get your electricity, because as we
all know, it's not just a closed system where you know,
(15:09):
all the electrictity magically comes from a place where pollution
is just a bad Yeah. I think we should also
think about the concerns that are involved specifically in vt
O L and will takeoff and landing um. So one
of the first things is simply safety. Turns out, vertical
(15:31):
takeoff and landing is not easy, not just from like
a fuel consumption standpoint, but it's difficult to do in
terms of maneuvering of the aircraft. Uh, and it has
caused a lot of safety problems in the past. That
the Harrier jumped jet. So that was a vertical takeoff
and landing jet that was powered by a vector thrust
turbo fan engine. So basically it sucked air through the
(15:54):
body of the airplane and could point it downwards to
lift itself up vertically. But the thing is, um harrier
jumped jets. While they could take off vertically, that was
not ideal. It was avoided under all circumstances, except when
it was absolutely necessary for emergency. I mean, what that
sounds like to me is that you're you're lighting a
fire directly underneath yourself and really hoping that the liftoff
(16:18):
created from it is going to get you out of
the way of the fire. You're, yeah, it's sort of.
I mean it's um so it's difficult to do. You
could take off from like an aircraft carrier that way
or something like that. I mean, the whole concept was
so that a jet would be able to take off
our land anywhere in the in case of nuclear war,
which would end up you know, targeting military instace exactly. Yeah,
(16:41):
you could. You could keep these things in a park
somewhere or whatever, you know, wouldn't it wouldn't have to
be But as it turned out, it was really hard
to do. Yeah, and so that was considered an accident
prone aircraft. There were a lot of incidents involving the
Harrier family and it was basically a dangerous aircraft. There's
an other one, more recent, the bel V twenty two Osprey,
(17:04):
which also has a reputation for being unsafe. Yeah, it
has a very controversial safety record. So it had an
early test period between two thousand, there were four osprey crashes. Uh,
and together those killed a total of thirty people. And
so the the airplane has been redesigned and so oh sorry,
let me explain. The osprey is a tilted rotor, so
(17:27):
that's a different method of vertical takeoff and landing. What
what that is is you imagine like a prop plane
has two propellers out on the wings. Now a normal
plane those would just be forward facing to generate forward
thrust and that would that would lift a plane once
you get enough velocity on a runway. But the way
of the twenty two osprey works is they start off
(17:49):
pointing up helicopter wings themselves tilt up so that the
propellers are facing like helicopter rotors. Yeah, so it uses
that to lift up off the ground and then it
can convert into horizontal plane flight as it's coming into
the air, so like the like the shield Hell Carrier. Yeah,
so there it did get a redesign, and it has
(18:11):
at least on paper, been safer since then. But I
know there's still controversy, was like how these accidents are classified.
There's also a scandal about officers military officers um asking
for maintenance records to be falsified so that it would
give the osprey a more favorable maintenance record and make
(18:32):
it look less prone for accidents mistakes. Yeah, essentially, what
I've read is that some people allege that things that
may have been problems with the airplane have been classified
as pilot errors to be but we we don't know,
I mean, to be fair, anything that's involved with you know,
a one or two rotor aircraft is incredibly challenging to fly.
(18:54):
I mean helicopters. You'll you'll hear pilots who have flown
both airplanes and helicopters talk about how helicopter ers are
really tricky, Like it's it's not something that's easy to
pick up, even if you're an accomplished pilot with a
with an airplane and so one way that these flying cars,
if they are ever made, could maybe get around that
(19:15):
is by having multiple rotors to add more stability. You know,
with a two rotor system, it's it's definitely less stable
that you see. Some of the drones UH and UH
and even remote controlled drones out there that are for
consumer use had between four and eight rotors to provide
that kind of level of stability. Definitely. Uh. Yeah. Another
(19:36):
concern with the vt O L technology is, as we
were just talking about fuel consumption, that uh uses more
fuel than a regular takeoff and that's one of the reasons, say,
like a Harrier, when it wanted to take off, even
though it was capable of vertical takeoff, they would do
a short runway takeoff sometimes just because that used less fuel.
(19:57):
And then not only that, but it's it tends to
be really noisy. Yeah, we all aircraft tend to be
really noisy, and so that's a big problem. Imagine you're
trying to say, well, okay, I want to pull out
into my driveway on the way to work in the
morning and take off. So if you ever heard a
helicopter takeoff or an airplane you know close, that's what
(20:22):
your neighbor next door is going to be hearing when
you do this. Now, hopefully they can. Because it's a
smaller aircraft, it will probably be less loud than you know,
like a Boeing taking off or something. Would hope, Um,
but still, you know, there's always gonna be that one guy. Yeah,
it's still I can't imagine that they're going to be
(20:42):
able to make it as quiet as just like a car,
so and and then and there. You won't. I don't
think you'll ever have a time where you'll be able
to just take off directly from your driveway. That's exactly right.
I think that the idea that you can do that
is just probably not gonna happen. Now you I can
imagine we might have vertical takeoff flying cars where you
(21:03):
don't have to go to the airport and get runway access,
but you will have say like a launching area, launch
designated area, because you would you would want to have
enough clearance on all sides so that you're not worried
about banging into a house, building, a tree, a power line,
any of that kind of stuff. Even even Tara Fuji
(21:23):
is kind of optimistic. Estimate is that it would take
a hundred feet or thirty meter diameter fifty feet on
all sides. Yeah, I think that's pretty standard idea of
you need at least that much just for safety and clearance. Yeah. Yeah,
So in that case, what you would have is a
designated spot where your multi rotor, which could become in
(21:45):
the form of tilted rotors, it could be we we
haven't even discussed like what form that this would take,
mostly because we don't have a lot of examples to
point out that. There are a lot of different proposals.
Tara Fuji is ideas tilted rotors. So it's like the
V twenty two osprey. It has blades that point up
when you're you're picking up, so it's like a helicopter
that lifts you off the ground and then they transition
(22:05):
over to provide forward thrust when you're flying. Um. But
there are there are other ideas you could use, like
ducted fans. That's one idea. I think that's what the
Moller skycar us I believe. So yeah, technically you could
also have even a jet engine on one of these
things that I don't imagine that we're kind of see
(22:25):
that anytime soon. But there are unmanned aerial vehicles that
use that kind of approach where they've got either a
combination of rotors and jet engine, or some of them
just have the jet engine because they launch straight from
another aircraft. But I don't we're gonna have cars that
launch off of, you know, another flying vehicle, unless unless
it happens to have the shield logo on it, in
(22:47):
which case I totally makes sense. Now, one thing you
you mentioned about noise pollution, I this is funny because
it would kind of go the opposite of what you
were saying about the hybrid fuel use, like, Okay, well
it'll use fuel for for takeoff because that's the harder task,
and then it will use an electric motor to power
(23:08):
it during flight. That does make a lot of sense.
But also I wonder if you could help fight the
noise problem if you could say, well, is it possible
to do electric takeoff? I really based upon our battery
technology right now, I'm really skeptical of that. I don't
think you would be able to get enough juice to
(23:28):
do it without having a vehicle so heavy that you
have defeated the purpose because you had to carry so
much battery power on board your car to to be
able to handle that. I think you're almost forced to
go with the fuel approach for takeoff and landing for
an average vehicle. I mean, I suppose you could try.
(23:50):
But unless you're unless you're doing a aircraft approach type thing,
like on an airstrip where it is the it requires
less energy than vertical takeoff and landing, I don't know
that you could get the vehicle light enough for you
to be able to do that reliably. Uh that is
that is one of the things that Tarafugia is promising
on this pie in the sky, an electric political I
(24:13):
think that's how they're planning to get past the noise pollution. Yeah,
that's to I mean, I mean, I mean you could
approach it. You could approach it by um focusing on
body designs, so like how light can we get You
have to maybe going with like like uh, you know,
carbon fiber type stuff, lightweight composite materials could maybe like
(24:35):
cut this thing into total minimum body weight. I can
see maybe maybe you just really powerful motor. You have
to make sure that that those a lot of tech
would have to come together in order to make that
anywhere near possible. UM. Not to mention the fact that.
I mean we were talking earlier, you know, like I
(24:55):
don't trust people driving next to me on Peachtree to
to not completely kill me with their suv. I really
don't want that guy in an suv to be fifty
ft above me. Well, I was going to say also
that besides that, with the composite materials, you have to
make sure that they're strong enough to withstand impact. So
you have to they have to still meet all the
impact requirements of your basic cars on the road. So
(25:18):
you have to make sure that whatever material you make
is both light so that you can cut down on
the requirements needed to get it into the air, and
resilience so that if you're in a crash, say just
driving around in regular car mode, that your car doesn't
shred into pieces. Yeah, speaking of crashes and getting on
board with what Lauren just said, I am going to
go on the record and say I do not want
(25:41):
human beings piloting these things. I think these should be
autonomous control or not at all. That that is my vote.
So you're you're you're saying that you want computers to
control this. I mean we've already seen, like with uh
research that came out of Google and other other facilities,
other other like Carmen. You've acturers that autonomous cars already
(26:03):
drive safer than human Yeah. From Google's fleet reports. You
remember that their autonomous cars, they were releasing the safety record,
and it turns out they've had two accidents. One of
the times was when a human was driving the autonomous
it was under manual control. The other time the autonomous
car was not at fault and got rear ended. So yeah,
(26:23):
so in other words, better than never been an accident
after hundreds and hundreds of hours on the roads in California.
No less, there have been no accidents with the car
under autonomous control. And as it turns out, like they've
they've shown that autonomous cars have much better reaction times,
are able to maintain the proper distance between other vehicles
(26:46):
much more effectively than human drivers. So I can see
where you're coming from. And Lauren, I think you agree
with Joe right that autonomous control is really because, I mean,
from what you were saying, you don't want, you know,
Joe SUV to be driving a vehicle directly over your head.
But if it's a computer that's really really good at it,
would you be less? I would be less completely terrified. Um,
(27:09):
but you know, my my terror level just just based
on the technology, I'm not sure. I mean, I don't know.
I can envision a future in which all of this
has come together. All right, I'm coming down against both
of you. Yeah, yeah, No, I'm going to say that
I only want flying cars if they can be controlled manually. Uh,
that's the only way I want it. I don't want
(27:29):
to fly. I want I want to be able to
have the thrill of scaring the heck out of people
by buzzing the Maverick style from top gun, but in
a in a car, I want to have that experience
of feeling like I'm in the fifth element maneuvering this
car through complex city scapes and weaving my way through
(27:52):
alley ways. That a robot lady is going to be
yelling at you about the points on your license. I
want the robot lady is Siri already does that? So
that's fine, that's we've already got that part. That part
of the future is here. So I Well, part of this,
I think is that I'm assuming I said the word
license and and that the license that you would have
(28:13):
to have for this would be a strong piloting license
that you would have had to have received a certain
amount of training for. See. Now, I also like that
because it immediately restricts who else gets the flying car.
And while I am a man of some means, I
would be able to get hold of one of these
flying cars, and thus it would be a status symbol
making me better than everybody else. Can you play video games?
(28:35):
So you clearly already know how to pilot things. As
long as I don't hit the Y button and prematurely
bail out of the car, I'm good. You're good to go. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Well I think you're insane. I I would not let
you near a flying car, especially since you don't even
drive a regular car. No, I would only drive a
flying car. I would. I would shell out the money
(28:59):
to get the license in the car, and then I
would laugh my way all the way to the ground,
burning and fiery death. Here there's where I have to
come out and say that I too, am completely on
board with if if this happens, it has to be autonomous.
I mean, it's it's you, just anecdotally, even without looking
(29:21):
into the actual facts and figures, just from a person's
general experience there's a good chance that all of you
listening to this have either been involved in an accident
or you know someone who has been. And it's one
of those things that's common enough where you know, when
we talk about autonomous cars, we're talking about trying to
take that element out as much as possible and save
(29:42):
human lives, which is, you know, that's something that's really
important to me obviously, and I think for flying cars
to be a reality so that we have this convenience,
but yet we don't have this added risk of people
who could be operating a vehicle under the influence of something.
Maybe there just suffering an impairment of some sort, or
maybe they're just not a good driver that they are
(30:05):
not going to put themselves and other people at risk
with something that is potentially extremely dangerous. I have another question,
Uh huh, how are now normally we think of, oh, man,
I'm gonna get pulled over because I was going five
miles per hour over the speed limit. So annoying. You know,
(30:27):
I'm actually glad there are cops out there policing traffic.
It can it can make you feel inconvenience, but that's
just you being selfish. Who is going to police the
vehicles in the air well, if they're autonomous, that definitely
raises some interesting questions because if there is an error,
who's at fault? Because if it's an autonomous vehicle and
(30:49):
if I hit a if I program in the let's
say it's GPS coordinates for the landing pad that I
want to go to, and as soon as I get
onto the lawn pad, the car takes over and it's
supposed to get me from my point of of departure
to my destination all by itself. If there's some sort
of incident along the way, who's it fault? Well, if
(31:11):
it's autonomous, i'd say the manufacturer. But if it's if
it's if it's you piling it, obviously it's you. I'm
envisioning an incredible future without insurance. Whoa where it's all
just manufacturer liability. This that thought just made me so
gleefully happy. Um, how okay, all that insurance cost just
(31:36):
gets rolled right into the costier vehicle right now. I
could totally deal with that. But but you know, legally speaking,
if it is a vehicle that's under manual control, you
would have to have some sort of special license, right right, okay,
I mean as of right now, in order to fly
a light sport aircraft, which is like what the what
the Terrafugia Transition would fall into the category of Um,
(31:57):
you know it's that's going to be a one to
two seater playing in with a certain limit of size
and power, and you don't you don't need a full
pilot license in order to do that. Basically all you
need is a driver's license and to show up and
prove that you're willing to follow rules. Um. But along
with that, you're not allowed to do things like fly
at night or just you know, like jaunt into any
(32:18):
old airspace that you want. You have to follow very
specific regulations. UM. Once you get a medical certificate, which
is the full f A A approved doctor checking you
out and saying that you're of sound physical and mental
health to fly a plane that could potentially wreck a
lot of stuff. Um, you know that that's within certain classes.
When you start getting into being able to take more
(32:40):
than just one person up in a plane with you
and and fly at night and fly with instrumentation, which
kind of falls under the category of automatic of automated vehicles,
I don't know, so, so it's it's a weird conundrum.
Like I, I can't imagine wanting to allow anyone into
an airplane who has not had those kind of checks
done and training done. But if we're talking about autonomous vehicles,
(33:03):
then I don't know. And so here's a well, let
me offer one more qualification. Um I I imagine people
will need even more certification if we're talking about the
actual flying card, the vertical takeoff and landing, because that
is tricky. Well, even if it's fully automated, I could
easily see there being another level of licenses required to
(33:26):
operate such a vehicle. And uh, and part of that
is just because you know, we're talking about another area
where technology is beginning to outpace the legal system, which
we see all the time, right we all we will
see this where engineers and scientists and researchers come up
with these amazing technologies that raise interesting questions of legality
(33:49):
because the law doesn't apply to that sort of stuff
because no one had thought of it back when they
wrote the laws. We are going to blow up this side. No,
it's gonna be fine. There's not a law against it.
Um So. Honestly, even light sport aircraft, which which covers
a whole lot of different experimental craft that are really
fun that we should totally do a whole episode on sometime. Um.
(34:12):
You know, it's even the laws governing who gets a
license for that are kind of in contention right now
and and are sort of being outdated by the number
of people who are building their own experimental craft. Yes,
so it might be a while before all these questions
are answered, and it may turn out that, you know,
sometimes the law comes up with answers that seem counterintuitive
(34:33):
or that some that will actually prevent an entire technology
from flourishing. So if it ends up that that even
with a fully autonomous flying car, that you have to
have a certain level of pilot's license, clearly that would
be a detriment because there will be a lot of
companies would say, well, you've just eliminated a huge potential
(34:54):
market for us, because not everyone's going to go through
that kind of trouble to be able to operate this
kind of car. Uh so why should we even go
into that business. We're not even gonna bother now. So
it could be, you know, it could be at what
some would refer to as a disincentive. I hate myself
right now. But anyway, that's the you know, that's that's
a concern, right that the law itself, that that even
(35:16):
if we were to meet all the technological challenges there are,
there's the chance that the law could end up preventing
it from flourishing. And and and what about that price point.
I mean, it's we've we've we've been talking a little
bit and during other topics about that. But you know,
like if if a car costs what like thirty thousand dollars,
if it's new days, um, decent average price to just
(35:38):
pull out the air sure um, then uh and and
your average light sport aircraft might cost say a hundred
thousand dollars the number for example, going back to the Terrafugia. Uh,
they're quoting that as a potential seven two seventy nine
thousand dollar cars? Are you talking about the one the transition,
the the likely one, not even the ridic list one, Yeah,
(36:01):
which doesn't have a price attached to it, because it's
just ridiculous. It's kind of a day dream at the moment. YEA,
So two d and seventy nine thousand, when you could
have bought a vehicle and a light aircraft together for
less than that and essentially had all of the capabilities
of the Tera Fugia, with the exception of the fact
that you you would have to keep your light aircraft
(36:21):
probably in a hangar somewhere, or you have to have
a special garage built force to drive your other car
to that to the air to the airstrip. But you
still have to have an airstrip to take off with
that one. So you know, the convenience factor being able
to drive your airplane home might not be enough for
you to say I'm willing to spend another hundred thousand
dollars on that and hundred thousand plus on that. So yeah,
I mean, that's that's expensive. I mean you look at
(36:43):
that vt O L technology and the vehicles that have
it are not cheap. Now that the Harrier is a
little bit different because that's an older aircraft. I mean
that that was developed in the late fifties and they
started building them in the sixties. But when you look
at the Osprey that was that's kind of another one.
Another reason why it's so um uh controversial in various
(37:05):
circles is not just for its safety record, which may
or may not be awful. It all depends upon whom
you ask, but also because it definitely went over what
they had projected it would cost. The original projection for
that program was I think two point five billion dollars,
not chump change, but it turns out that the whole
(37:26):
thing is going to be closer to thirty five point
six billion dollars, which is a big leap. Obviously, every
single asprey costs around oh between sixty million and seventy
million dollars every single one, and there's something like four
d and eight of them that have been ordered to date.
But they're all full of gold toilets. They're not all
(37:49):
full of gold toilets. One gold toilet apiece, you're your
flying car will not need a gold toilet. So no, anyone,
anyone who sees me in my flying car is going
to have need of a goal toilet or at least
a toilet, because that's how I'm gonna fly that sucker.
Um No. But the point I'm trying to make here
is that this technology, while while you know, the the
(38:10):
whole idea behind the osprey was they wanted to have
a vehicle that could uh could land in remote locations
without an airstrip that would be act like a helicopter
whenever it was taking off or landing, but like a
plane in every other case. And it turned out that
achieving that ended up being a lot more complicated and
expensive and dangerous than they had first anticipated. So I
(38:32):
would imagine that same sort of stuff, even though we've
learned a lot since then, that it's still going to
be one of those those technologies that, at least for
the first few implementations, we're going to see some really
expensive vehicles, assuming they ever make it to actual manufacturing lines.
Now Terafugia, for its part, they're saying that they'll be
(38:53):
available by so it's not that long before we should
start seeing these, at least in limited production runs, assuming
that everything goes well. So and I just wonder what
kind of market there is for it. I mean, i'd like,
I really don't think that anyone other than people who
were going to buy a light sport craft anyway are
going to pick These's about to say, I know some
(39:14):
I know some people who have pilot's licenses for light aircraft,
and they also are of a particular tax bracket where
I could see them picking one of these up. Because
I grew up in a part of Georgia that had
a lot of affluent families. I wish I had been
one of them. No, it's fine, I'm okay now that
I'm going to get my manual powered flying car. You
(39:37):
were just turning into a little tyrant today, just imagining
all of the suffering you'll gleefully inflict in the future.
This is the kind of thing that gives people, not
pilot licenses. Actually, that's that's I think. I think that
that showing the glee and other people's terror is what
an f a a doctor you would say, like you're
(39:58):
not allowed ground check or they talk to all his friends.
I'm really good at masking that glee when it comes
down to it. I've never seen you do that, but
you are an actor, so I can. I can totally
fake sincerity. It's the first thing they teach you. Okay, Well,
the future is full of excellence and terror. I think.
(40:18):
I think flying cars, I think are are one of
those things that if we see them, uh, it'll be
in a very limited capacity for the foreseeable future. And
I think for the average consumer, I agree with you guys,
it's got to be automated. It has to be, because
if it's not, then it's just it's just I can't
imagine any company, yeah, taking that on. That's a huge risk, right,
(40:42):
I can't imagine any insurance company offering up insurance for
that future without insurance, but none the way you're talking,
we're talking where you can't get it because no one
will recover you, not that it doesn't exist. So um, yeah,
I think uh, I think will be a while before
we see this. Now, that doesn't mean that maybe maybe
(41:04):
in that magical twenty to fifty year time frame that
we always talk about in the show, we finally start
seeing them. It would be kind of cool. I mean,
I think it would be a neat thing to see. Uh.
And and these autonomous cars, like we said, have been
proven themselves to be really safe, so at least on
a on that level, I can imagine it. I just
don't know what the time. As far as I can tell,
(41:28):
the deal with flying cars is, there's not any magic
element missing. It's just like so many other problems, it's
just a feasibility and economics problem. And how can you
make this not cost of ba jillion dollars and not
you know, super super energy hungry and all those questions. Yeah,
I think that in a good couple of centuries will
(41:49):
totally have them. Yeah. It's funny that it only took
a little more than a decade for someone to first
propose a flying car, and a century later we're still
waiting for one to take off. All right, guys, so
we're wrapping this up now. You know you love the show.
You wouldn't be listening to the show unless you love
the show. So if you love the show, do you
(42:11):
know what you would really love? F W Thinking dot
com because that's a website where we've got all the
videos the podcast like this one. Blog posts articles stuff
where we go into a lot more detail on these
subjects and we talk about stuff that we haven't even
touched on in the podcast. So if you're interested in
the future, go check that out, and remember you can
interact with us. We are on lots of social media
(42:33):
outlets including Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus with the handle
f W Thinking. So get in touch with us, let's
know what you think, and we will talk to you
again really soon. For more on this topic in the
future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com, brought to
(43:02):
you by Toyota. Let's go places
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