Continue Discussion 11 replies
January 2021

maule

This is obviously extremely cool and interesting and I’d love to fly/drive one but I don’t see the advantage over a 172 and an Uber.

2 replies
January 2021

johnmmyers

I’m not sure what the use case for this is. I admire the effort, but I can’t think of a use for it that isn’t contrived. Maybe a traveling Sears Roebuck salesman?

I can see maybe someone using it to travel around small islands say in the Bahamas where there aren’t any rental cars, or maybe in Africa. Not sure there’s a market there for more than a handful of planes though.

January 2021

system

FAA! Broaden the SP fleet NOW! Another near half million dollar overweight pig gets an FAA waiver to be flown by sport pilots with lotsa cash and influence involved. Isn’t it about time for the FAA to NEXT MONTH just wave the wand and whether through a simple MTOW change to 2200 pounds and Vs of 50 or their forever-discussed formula incorporating Vh, Vs, complexity, MTOW, #of seats, etc etc let us poor peasants have something other than 70 year old classics or foreign composites to fly?
Allow 150/152, Tomahawk, Colt, Cherokee, Citabria/Aurora etc …ALL safer and with higher fuel capacity and useful load than most now crippling the movement.

January 2021

Dennis_C

Seems to me to be a compromised airplane and a compromised car, which makes neither a good airplane nor a good car. I’d rather fly a real airplane and rent a car or Uber. This thing will never ‘fly’.

January 2021 ▶ maule

Arthur_Foyt

Yawn. Until they make it usable as boat too, what’s the point. :slight_smile:

January 2021 ▶ maule

system

Agree. Simply too many engineering compromises- it dices! Slices! makes coffee!, and doesn’t do anything well. It will take a dramatic breakthrough in propulsion and energy storage (weight and efficiency) for something like this to be successful.

January 2021

system

Yeah, like I would drive this thing on New England roads and bridges (shake it apart in 10 sec.). Who do you call when it breaks, AAA or an A&P?

January 2021

Don_Weber

Park it in a parking lot for one hour. $15,000 in repairs for shopping cart dings.

Or five minutes on 10th Avenue in NY City.

Sorry, guys - this idea won’t fly.

January 2021

system

They’ll have to use the “small manufacturer” exemptions for safety and emissions, and the thing won’t be street legal with even a drop of lead in the tank. Another toy, like the Icon.

January 2021

system

In this day of sky high insurance rates, where do you insure this thing? Your usual auto insurers probably wouldn’t touch it, and aircraft underwriters want no part of a “plane” driving on the freeway.

January 2021

jimhanson

Pilots have an almost universal disdain for the CONCEPT of flying cars–they’ve been “proposed” and “right around the corner” for 3/4 of a century.

At least, these aren’t being developed by misinformed government bureaucrats who would FORCE them on us because THEY think they know better (consider all of the Communist car failures produced by government factories. I seriously would like to see who they polled for this market, and how many they think they will sell.