Are flying cars realistic?

It is a supremely impractical idea.

Yes they are… they are called “Airplanes” ... you just need a good bunch of traffic controllers and laws. It is only a matter of time before we move from 2 dimensional movement to 3 or more

No. There are different requirements for a car than for a plane and they don’t really overlap.

The realisation I just had that this will never be possible, is a childhood dream crushed!

Crash landing on things with the force of gravity is too big a stumbling block.

The age of the flying car is just around the corner. As it has been for decades.

@talljasperman haha I stumbled upon an online article that basically said the same thing. “Yeah, they’re called planes.”

Closer than you think.

Never going to happen, at least not like we think.

Most people can hardly afford gas to drive to work in a fuel efficient diesel car, there is no way the average joe is going to be able to fork out for gas to feed one or more turbines.

Build something like what iron man has, or forget the idea all together.

Airplanes need constant maintanance to stay airworthy.
Considering that most people can not be arsed to maintain their cars regularly, you would have fatal accidents en masse. Further compounded by the fact that cars tend to break down even with maintanance. A breakdown on a road is one thing. At 1km height, you are dead.
Next there is the fuel cost. With oil reserves diminishing and prices increasing, prohibitively expensive for most people.
Then there is safety. With tens of thousands of accidents every year one has to conclude that people are too dense to drive a car safely on predefined, linear, 2 dimensional roads with clear traffic rules of conduct. And you want to unleash millions of them on a 3 dimensional sky? A really terrifying prospect.

Personally, I can’t wait for cars that drive on tracks instead of roads and run on wood or coal. That would certainly solve the gasoline deficiency.

I wanna be an air cop.

”PULL OVER NOW!!!”

@Photosopher Pull over or pull down, officer?

For some reason, I could imagine portable flying backpacks will come first before flying cars.

Well if I keep pointing at my crotch, mouthing “go down”, the driver will think I want something else.

Getting away with saying it’s a few years away for more than thirty years.

Movies teach us about the future. First we get a black president, then we get flying cars.

There are several being designed and tested. Here is one

Just ride a damn bike.

The folding-wing type flying car has been around since at least the 50’s. I don’t see them ever “taking off” in popularity.

How would a police officer direct traffic, if there were no gravity?

Bad idea.

Why would they need to direct traffic up there? Plenty of space…

Flying cars wouldn’t necessarily mean three-dimensional traffic movements. They could use magnetic levitation instead.

@SavoirFaire so they hover slightly above the ground? What’s the point?

@trickface Greater fuel efficiency, fewer road hazards, reduced interference from weather conditions…

I think it might be possible if they could fully automate the piloting. If other flying cars could communicate with each other, it would be possible for them to completely prevent accidents, and parachute systems could be designed to deploy in a mechanical failure emergency. Travel would have to be restricted to being over clear paths to prevent cars crashing on houses. The fuel is a major issue, but in 100-or-so years it’s possible that we’ll have some very impressive batteries, or some other power source. Flying cars are still a long ways off.

It definitely wouldn’t work with 16-year-olds manually piloting while texting to each other over people’s houses.

Flying cars are on the horizon (pun intended)!

Combined with free flight technology, there will be less chance of collisions than now occur between ground cars.

Flying cars, for all the greatness it sounds, would be a disaster on a major scale. There are too many things that could go wrong. How high would the car fly? Would you have to have one altitude for commuters, another one for freight haulers, one reserved just for law enforcement and emergency air-cars? What happens when some drunk or someone high as a kite (and not because he/she is driving a flying car) runs into a skyscraper? What if the thing malfunctions or runs out of fuel, will there be a large parachute to deploy to let it down gently? What about the noise they would make? How much exhaust will they kick up landing and taking off? What age or license would you need to pilot one; you want to let some 17yr old loose in the skies with one? Since you can’t regulate who can and cannot have one, what stops some terrorist, 5th columnist from coordinating and attack with dozens of dozens of flying cars packed to the hilt McVey style and hitting bridges, monuments, railways, electric plants, etc.? Way too many problems with society right now to make them worth the bother.