Flying start to your dream car

Man’s elusive dream of flying a car will soon be a reality. A number of auto manufacturers in developed countries are in the advanced stages of putting wings on the automobile and making a hybrid of car and plane, says Gyan Marwah

IN the 1974 James Bond thriller The Man with the Golden Gun, viewers gasped in amazement when the villain’s car changed into an airplane and took off. Film critics said it was author Ian Fleming’s imagination working overtime. A car, they derided, was a vehicle driven on terra firma and a plane was meant to fly. They were as much apart as humans and birds.

That was over three decades ago. Today, technology is turning man’s elusive dream of a flying car into a reality. A number of auto manufacturers, especially in America, are in the advanced stages of putting wings on the automobile and making a hybrid of car and plane. Variously called the Skycar, Skyrider, Aircar and Personal Air & Land Vehicle (PAL-V), most of these are in advanced stages of road and air tests and some are expected to hit the road — and be airborne — as early as in a year.

Like jet fighters, a number of these cars are designed to have vertical take off and landing (VTOL) facilities and will be able to cruise in the air at speeds varying between 200 and 500 km per hour using high octane fuel. When airborne, they will be mostly computer-driven, will have airbags, aerodynamic bumpers and a large part of the navigation will come from the advanced Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites.

Flight testing

Take for example, the US-based Moller International Skycar. It is a four-person VTOL car-craft that is currently undergoing initial flight testing. Another American invention, the Skyrider X2R, in advanced stages of completion, will use onboard computers to fly you to your destination just by your voice commands. The PAL-V too is a flying car of the future that is closely being monitored by auto and aviation enthusiasts.

But the project that is nearest to completion is the Terrafugia Transition Flying Car created by designer whiz Carl Deitrich and students of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA. On first look it resembles a sports utility vehicle (SUV) but on closer scrutiny it is a flying car that is ready to hit the road — and air — in less than a year. It has retractable 27-foot-long wings that fold on either side of the car and spread out when it gets into the take-off mode. The Terrafugia Transition Flying Car — or simply the Transition — can be driven around like a regular road car but when you have a street long enough then you can unfold its wings and it will take off like a plane. However, unlike other flying cars being developed this will not have a vertical take-off and landing facility. It would need a long strip of road to be airborne.

Once it takes off, this roadable airplane would be able to fly to a range of around 750 km and would carry two people including the luggage. Of course there would be a strict restriction regarding the amount of weight that can be carried in the car when it converts into a plane.

The Transition would not be expensive to run and its fuel consumption would be similar to that of any luxury car. Its top speed in the air would be around 210 kmph, which translates to be much faster than road cars. Costing around $150,000, it is expected to be delivered to customers by early 2009.

While the Transition is not the sort of flying car that you can just decide to fly over a traffic jam, it is a step forward in the aviation dream. In fact ever since the development of automobiles, humans have dreamt of not just driving them on roads but flying them for speedy travel and to avoid sticky traffic jams.

Experiments started as early as 1917 when American automobile engineer Glen Curtis, generally thought to be the father of the flying car, developed the Autoplane. Though the Autoplane did make short aerial bounces, it never really flew. In 1937, another American, Waldo Waterman, created the Aerobile and even as the project looked promising it had to be grounded for lack of funds. A decade later came the Airphibian that too could not fructify because of lack of finances. The most successful was the Aerocar that could actually fly and was given a go-ahead by the American government in 1970. However the global fuel crisis put an end to man’s dream of a plane-car.

The dream finally seems to be turning into reality in the new millennium as the Transition and other flying cars get ready for take-off by 2009. — NF