what if it does start to roll? It doesn't seem like it has any propultion method to right itself...

shame it has to be ugly as hell, though.

Right. 1 out of 8 - chances of being in a car accident. Fine. Now, we add tons of dubious aircraft flying through crowded city skyscrapers, at high speeds, when most people can't avoid hitting each other on the ground at less than 30MPH. Sure, that will work.

Is it me or does it look like this "commercial" (and i use that term VERY LIGHTLY) is something that should be from Robocop 1, maybe 2.

I just want to float about one foot over the ground. Here is PA, we have nearly the worst roads in the country due to the insane pattern of cold/warm/hot weather. If the car would just float, we could avoid all the potholes. Hell, the highway could over grow with grass again. Death to asphalt!

ok, little off topic there.

Anyway, why do flying cars have to fly 200ft up?

Actually NASA announced ages ago that they already have a air traffic control system built for the day flying cars role off the production lines

why are people even bothering? it'll die before it can take off. fuel efficiency is going to be worse than the hummer, while cargo/passenger load being far smaller. and the fatality rate for accidents? har har.

if it ain't broke, don't make it worse, i say.

@agrajag42: Because we already have hovercraft.

I don't know, looks like it could happen:

http://www.urbanaero.com/Downloads/Hummingbird.mpg

When was Blade Runner supposed to take place? 2018? We got plenty of time to slap together a police spinner, kids.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinner_(Blade_Runner)

We already have recalcitrant Sushi Masters who will insist on serving only two pieces when you want four. And noodles.

Realistically, I don't know if these will be as commonplace as regular cars, 'cause nobody is going to want to hear one babies touching down outside their bedroom window at 3 AM. But as a police cruiser, ambulance, air taxi...? You ain't got enough piss to put out that campfire, partner....

That ambulance was tearing shit up

I may not be an engineering major, but shouldn't the control vanes be UNDER the props? Don't you have to vector the exhaust and not the intake? On top of that, I did a render of a similar vehicle back when I was first learning C4D in '99 - 2000. Always thought it would eat too much fuel for the payload it could carry. My math at the time said that virtually the entire shell would have to be fuel tank.

That is the funniest video Giz has had in quite a while. The production quality alone is priceless. And why are the black cotton balls falling up out of that building near the middle of the video?

And is it just me, or does it feel like they are trying to target super heroes with this ad?

A terrorist's dream come true.

Yeah I'll love to see how the license and testing to pilot one of these things will be. Imagine how strict the DMV will be then. Too much trouble...just give me 4 wheels. Leave this to the aviators. blah...

i doubt Homeland Security is gonna allow this to happen, let alone the FAA.

cant wait to drunk drive this!

"revolutionary"
"dare to go"
"virtually any"
"virtually limitless"

All words of BS generation.

They didnt' specify if their patent was a design patent or an application patent. Big difference.

It's just a ducted Chinook anyway.

I am a helicopter pilot.

what got me on this is that if you look on their web site they list the fuel weight as being 1300LBS for 2 hours.... assuming that it runs on Jet A fuel at 7LBS per gallon, this thing uses about 185 gallons of fuel for 2 hours or 93 gallons per hour.... A bell 206 jetranger uses less than half that... at $4 per gallon this thing is one expensive beast to run, and clearly isnt intended to replace anything land based from a budget standpoint

those where some incredibly realistic smoke physics! lets get those guys into the gaming industry!

I have to agree with the dissenters on this one.

The video goes to great lengths to tell us what we already know: Air cars are potentially cool and useful.

What the video leaves out is any technical detail past the design features.

Phase one: collect investors.
Phase two:
Phase three: profit

now all they need is a flux capacitor to provide enough power...

I'm pretty sure I saw this video back when I was in middle school, around seven years ago. Back then they were saying it would be 2010, too.

Aaron is Right...

Unless it is a flying DeLorean, I don't care.

It needs Altezza taillights and larger rims...

Yeaaaahhhh...good luck with that...

The video is quite the joke, the air car is "immune to objects" like power lines. Snicker, snicker, snicker.

A great deal of what pilots have to do while flying is to look for places they could land in an emergency. This thing can't land in an emergency as it has the glide ratio of a rock. It'll need a rocket deployed parachute.

Man imagine robbing a bank with this thing, that would be so sweet. I have to say the graphics on that infomercial were a notch above GTA: Vice City Stories, I think I'll stick to flying my Little Willie for now.

looks to me like something you would show a bunch of moronic gov. officials while asking them for a R&D grant. I mean, if you can milk the DHS/DOD cow, why wouldn't you?

Fly one of those down south here and it'd be brought down by a redneck with a shotgun swearin it was a UFO!

@Skeptic

Yah thats a very good point. I have had 3 cars completely die on my in my life (thats not counting the number that have stalled)

I know helicopters can use autorotation to try and survive an engine failure. I can't say for certain, having only flown fixed wing air planes (and mostly sailplanes where every landing is a forced landing but you have a 23:1 glide ratio), but it is my understanding that successfully pulling off an autorotation is much more difficult and takes quite a bit of training.

Heffae,
you are right that it takes skill to pull off an auto, but any licensed rotor pilot can do it, and has done hundreds of them.... its not like anyone with a drivers license would be able to fly something like that....

on the other hand though, im not sure how well this would autorotate, because a large part of the physics involved have to do with forward airspeed and the rotating disk behaving as a wing, giving the aircraft lift just like a fixed wing does as it goes through the atmosphere... with the rotors in ducts this wouldnt be possible... but im sure if this isnt vaporware, they will have thought of it before testing.

I've known about the X-Hawk for half a year or so. It has some serious potential.

From what I've seen, the company is not saying its going to replace your car, there selling to a different crowd, like the Police, or Coast Gaurd, News stations, Military, etc.

They even had a mockup made...with a freakin gatlin gun mounted on the side of it...freaking sweet.

heres the military version pic:
http://www.flightglobal.com/assets/getAsset.aspx?ItemID=13...

Did i just watch the intro to 'Megarace'? Has someone told Lance Boyle about this?

The part that I find the most amusing is how the wheels look like those of a souped up shopping cart.

They even had a mockup made...with a freakin gatlin gun mounted on the side of it...freaking sweet.

[author switches to Napoleon Dynamite voice]

Yessss! I would keep my numbchucks stashed in the door pocket so I could like grab them on the way out. I only hope the flight suit has lots of pockets. For storing like tots and stuff. That would be freaking sweet.

Chicks dig guys with flying skills.

Hold on, super-cynics! You are correct that none of use civilians will ever fly our own car home. But this is not pitched as something for the general public, but for police and fire/rescue jobs.

It's no Moller Skycar scam; these are experienced industry folks...Bell Helicopter and IAI are involved. I think there's a good chance you'll see these in a few years, in very specialized roles.

i didn't read any of the other comments so someone else could of said this but... they already made a flying car they just need to finish the glitches and sell them http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f118/improvmaniac/skycar...

Hey adam, don't you go getting bitter now. I, being only 18 years old, will most likely get to see a flying car.

Now you think about that for a while, old feller

@murc,

Alrighty, now I'm sold. These types of things always look cooler when it can fire 600 rounds per minute.

Ok heres the thing, Homeland INsecurity gets crazy with bird fliiping mooninites, so lol @ them letting flying cars happen.

Second, the FAA would have no jurisdiction in this.

Third, I fly an ultralight with shrouded pusher prop, without the wings I can drive it on streets as I have added lights, turn signals etc, I just have the wings disassembled in storage bins on the thing, if I want to fly I find a field, set up the wings and take off.

if it doesn't work out SimCity 3000 will let you revert to an earlier saved game!

Now that comment right there is just priceless...

three things:
1) People walking below this thing are going to LOVE being blown around by those two huge fans.

2) Like I'm going to trust my life to a vehicle that uses lawn mower wheels.

3) This just goes to show you- you can't always legitimize something by throwing a british accent at it.

some weeks ago they were talking about that thing on a german tv station, saying that the israeli government had ordered one of those things...

The concept of a flying car is flawed.
Trying to do too many things in much too small form factor to work with.
OTOH, a flying bus - that is a roadable business jet the size of a city bus, now that is much more practical and it also might have a market among aging executives.

I love how they have a flying car and the FIRST THING they want to do is fight crime. That's like saying ultralight pilots should dogfight F-16s.

This looks like a concept from an intro graphic design course at a 3rd rate community college.

fly this shit in Boston and homeland security will shut down the city...after shooting you down with a nuclear missile of course.

They have a Mockup of the "Back to the Future" Delorean on display too, but that doesn't get it any closer to working in real life.

Any links to pics of a flight model or testing data or who provides the hardware?

Not to be nosy, but aircraft are cool.

I liked how the flying car saved the day in the end... I love happy endings.

Who here wants to drive a "flying car" made by a company who cannot afford CG animation better than that of the 1980's for a simple demo render?

There id no room in the thing. Where would they put the patient if it was an ambulance. No room for the medic either. Pilot to patient: "sorry sir, you have to sit up, we don't have enough room for you to lie down...now if you don't mind, can you administer your own IV while I fly you to the hospital?"

Maybe this might work given......sorry I was dreaming the future was now & the highways in the sky were centrally controlled by a supercomputer that absolved humans from screwing up the commute like on terra firma, if only.

add birds and you have a nice concoction for death.

So what if I wash windows right? On the side of one of those high rise buildings right? And I drop my squeegee accidentally and one of these things is flying below me, and my squeegee happens to land in one of the horizontal fans?

Behold, man's constant pursuit for new technology, halted by the forefather of all tools:

the stick.