Wright This: The Flying Car Is Finally Here

For once reality has figuratively kicked fiction’s butt. While the Jetson’s predicted that we wouldn’t be taking off in our personal flying cars anytime before 2060, Spielberg raised our hopes by cutting down the lag time by almost fifty years. By 2015, he predicted we would get used to cars magically spawning wings and taking off around us.

The prototype has already completed more than a dozen successful test flights. It hasn’t crashed when in air and looks perfectly at home as it serenely cruises the streets.

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“Transition” is coming home baby!

That’s what the inventors at Terrafugia (terra-FOO-gee-ah), a small start-up launched by the MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics are calling their baby. Giving a whole new meaning to street legal hybrids, Transition can be transformed from a car into a plane in less than 30 seconds. It is powered by a 100 HP Rotax engine, which in itself is a technological feat. As a car Transition offers a very acceptable 12.75 kmpl on the highway. When in air, its 75-liter tank gives it a 450-mile range at a cruising speed of 115 mph. The driver/pilot can switch from one mode to the other right from the driver’s seat, simultaneously folding the wings and shifting the engine power from rear mounted propellers to front wheels.

The Indian ‘Avish-Car’

You may think that’s there’s little point fantasizing about ever owning a Transition or any flying car in the near future. They will cost an arm (Hritick’s) and a leg (katrina’s), the kind of money we can never hope to have. While the money part can’t be helped, don’t give up on your dream to own a flying car just yet. With Indian (read: Jugad) ingenuity hard at work, it won’t be long before you can get your humble Maruti 800 fitted with chopper blades at the local garage and heckle those untrained commercial pilots while flying to work.

At the Aero India 2011 air-show, 52-year-old Vishwanath showcased his winged Maruti, which took him 16 years to develop. The car runs on pump petrol and has propellors on four ends of it’s roof assisted by vacuum sections around each of the four tyres. Talking about his flying car, Vishwanath said “After studying 2.5 million shapes and objects linked to automobiles and working through complex theories, I built this technique which will give my car vertical lift capabilities.”

A car that lifts vertically! What more could we as Indians have asked for. While Transition needs a 2500 ft runway to take off, the Indian version take off like chopper. But here we’ll have to cut your dream short. The flying Maruti has never actually flown and though the car’s complex inner working have been secured with more than 40 patents, critics refuse to believe that it will actually ever fly.

But we shouldn’t let these party pooper pessimists stop us from craning our necks, point towards the sky and yell “It’s a bird, It’s a plane…Oh wow! It’s a Maruti”

All You wanted to know about the flying car

Where can I use a Transition?

Buy the transition only if you have a 2,500 feet of grassy track to spare. Either that or be prepared to drive to the closest airport and wait your turn.

Any Special Training

When pilots in India don't need any special training to effortlessly buzz commercial planes, why would you? But if you insist on doing it the long legal way, you'd be required a get a sport pilot license, which requires a minimum of 20 hrs of flight time.

Air to Road transition

Once Transition lands, the pilot turned driver activates the electro-mechanical wing folding mechanism, which makes wings to fold in less than thirty seconds. It can then be driven like any other car.

How much will the Transition Cost?

Anywhere between ₹9000000 – ₹11,000000 (crore)

How many planes have been sold? Any Indian's on the list?

Over 80 planes have been reserved. Since the deal is only being done in the US there are currently no Indians on the list. Even those who can afford to import and fly the car, will have to take special permission from the Director General of Civil Aviation.

Retired Hurt

The first attempts at creating flying cars were fairly simple—install an airplane engine and two wings on a regular car, and you were good to go...err fly.

Sky Flivver

In 1926, Henry Ford displayed an experimental single-seat flying car that he called the "sky flivver". The project was abandoned two years later when a test flight crashed, killing the pilot.

Curtiss Autoplane

In 1917, Glenn Curtiss, who could be called the father of the flying car, unveiled the first attempt at such a vehicle. His aluminum Autoplane sported three wings that spanned 40 feet (12.2 meters). The car's motor drove a four-bladed propeller at the rear of the car. The Autoplane never truly flew, but it did manage a few short hops.

Arrowbile

Developed by Waldo Waterman in 1937, the Arrow bile was a hybrid Studebaker-aircraft. Like the Autoplane, it too had a propeller attached to the rear of the vehicle. The three-wheeled car was powered by a typical 100-horsepower Studebaker engine. The wings detached for storage. A lack of funding killed the project.

ConvAirCar

In the 1940s, Consolidated-Vultee developed a two-door sedan equipped with a detachable airplane unit. The ConvAirCar debuted in 1947, and offered one hour of flight and a gas mileage of 45 miles (72 kilometers) per gallon. Plans to market the car ended when it crashed on its third flight.

There is no lack of engineers taking on the challenge to design a new breed of flying cars. While sleeker, more advanced cars have been developed in the last decade, no one has come close to opening up a flying car dealership. Here are a few of the individuals attempting to deliver a flying car:

Skycar

Paul Moller has spent 40 years and millions of dollars developing his Skycar. He is now very close to developing the first mass-marketed flying car. In 1965, he demonstrated his first attempt, the XM-2, which hovered off the ground but didn't go anywhere. In 1989, Moller unveiled the M200X, which has now flown 200 flights and can go as high as 50 feet (15.24 meters).

CityHawk

In Israel, Dr. Rafi Yoeli of Urban Aeronautics is testing the CityHawk, a prototype of a fly-by-wire car. He's also working on a project centered around the X-Hawk, a rotorless Verticle-Take-Off and Landing vehicle (VTOL).

Aircar

In 1990, Kenneth Wernicke formed Sky Technologies to develop a small-winged flying car. His Aircar has flown at 200 to 400 mph (322 to 644 kph) and driven at 65 mph (105 kph). It's also small enough to fit into an average parking space.

Sokol A400

Recently, Branko Sarh, a senior engineer at McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, has attempted to develop a flying car, called the Sokol A400, or Advanced Flying Automobile. Sarh designed a 4-passenger vehicle that would pop out telescoping wings at the push of a button.

LaBiche

The LaBiche Aerospace FSC-1TM is a real treat for those who want to soar high in the sky with its sleek folding design and hair-raising speeds. The wings and rear propeller automatically vanish inside the car while you are busy setting the street on fire. The LaBiche flies at a mind-blowing speed of 275 mph. All do-it-yourself freaks would love to grab the build-it-yourself kit that costs $175,000.

PAL-V ONE

The PAL-V ONE is a hybrid of a car a motorbike and a gyrocopter: a personal air and land vehicle. A solution to increasing congestion in our cities, highways and skyways. On the ground, the slim line, aerodynamic 3-wheel vehicle is as comfortable as a luxury car. But has the agility of a motorbike, thanks to its patented cutting-edge ‘tilting’ system. The single rotor and propeller are folded away until the PAL-V ONE is ready to fly.

From the May 2011 issue of FHM India.