Flying car

Terrafugia Releases New Driverless Flying Car… Animation

Terrafugia released a new video today showing off its latest flying car concept. Should consumers expect to see this new driverless model, known as the TF-X™, zipping around in the sky sometime soon? No. No, they should not. This new animated video for the TF-X™™ is just that, an animated video. And with all due…

People Still Insist This Flying Car Will Arrive By 2017, Despite Crash

Another day, another promise that flying cars are just over the horizon. It’s like that movie Groundhog Day except Bill Murray’s character wakes up once every six months to a new world where he’s completely forgotten the media’s promises of flying cars from six months ago. From WGBH: You are now living in the future.…

Flying Car Crashes During Test Flight

A flying car crashed during a test flight in Slovakia on Friday. The Aeromobil car was piloted by Stefan Klein, a co-founder of the company. Klein was able to deploy a parachute for the vehicle, which is said to have helped ease the severity of the impact. Witnesses near the Nitra Janíkovce airport described seeing…

It’s Flying Car Season Again

Every six months, websites proclaim that the flying car is just over the horizon! And as if on schedule, the Daily Mail has a new article about how Terrafugia’s Transition is coming soon! The only problem? We’ve been hearing that since 2008. The last time that Terrafugia really took over the flying car conversation was…

Flying Car Prototype From 1990 Going Up For Auction

Want to own your very own flying car? Will you settle for a prototype that never left the ground? Well then you’re in luck! Because the Barrett-Jackson auction in Arizona has a 1990 prototype with your name on it. The car is called the Sky Commuter and was produced in 1990 by a company in…

Back to the Future Wasn’t Supposed to Have a Sequel

Great Scott! Did you know that Back to the Future was never supposed to have a sequel? Imagine that reality for a second — a world without Marty McFly’s hoverboard and shoes and flying DeLorean? The mind reels! Director Robert Zemeckis explained it all in Empire magazine’s oral history of Back to the Future: We’d…

“Flying Car” Crash in Florida Leaves Two Injured

Two people were injured after a Maverick brand “flying car” crashed today in Marion County, Florida. Both reportedly escaped with minor injuries. The Maverick has been involved in at least two other accidents during testing, one in 2012 and another in 2013. “This homemade vehicle managed to make flight with two people inside but then…

Elon Musk Wants To Make A Flying Car

“Maybe we’ll make a flying car, just for fun,” Elon Musk told The Independent yesterday. Explaining that he’d “thought about it quite a lot,” the only thing stopping him appears to be every single thing that’s kept the flying car from becoming a mainstream reality in the past 100 years. “We could definitely make a…

An Astrophysicist Explains Our Flying Car Problem

In a new essay at the New York Times, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester asks the retro-futurist’s most daunting question: Where’s my flying car? Or, as Adam Frank’s piece is titled, “I Was Promised Flying Cars.” As an astronomy-obsessed kid in the 1970s, I subsisted on a steady diet of science…

FLYING CAR UPDATE: Just Two More Years, Guys!

A few weeks ago we looked at the broken promises of Terrafugia — a flying car company with a product that’s always just two years away. Well, we’ve got an important update. The company is looking for just $30 million more to get their product off the ground. And you’ll never guess when they project…

A Very Specific List of Things That Are Ruining My Google Alerts

I love Google Alerts. They’re a great tool for tracking the mention of different things online. I use them less as a way to learn about breaking news and more as a way to discover how people are talking about the future. But there are all kinds of things that are messing them up. Well,…

Hugo Gernsback’s vision for the flying car of 1973, as it appeared on the May 1923 cover of Science and Invention magazine. The thing had two wheels, a bubble-top and a push-button control panel. I guess if we’re honest with ourselves, American designs for the flying car of tomorrow peaked in 1923, didn’t they? [Image…

This flying drone helicopter truck is a real life transformer

What is this? A flying drone? Eight flying drones? One flying helicopter? A moving room? A truck? It’s a little bit of everything. Called the AT Black Knight Transformer, it combines the vertical takeoff and landing of a helicopter with the off-road driving capabilities of a truck. So yes, that means it can fly and…

San Francisco’s flying car, circa 1920

This 1920 photo was taken at the corner of Hoffman and 23rd St., in San Francisco’s Noe Valley, on what looks like a rather foggy day. Clearly, geeks in San Fran have been trying to build flying cars for a pretty long time. You can see this photo, along with many other historical photos of…

1968 Time Capsule Opened Prematurely, Robbing Future of Cute Drawings

An elementary school in the Philadelphia suburb of Warminster recently opened up a time capsule from 1968. Unfortunately for time capsule purists, this uncapsuling was a bit premature. You see, the McDonald Elementary School’s time capsule wasn’t supposed to be opened until the year 2068. In this time capsule obsessive‘s humble opinion, opening any time…

Surprise! Dubious Flying Car Company Loses All Kinds of Money

The Sacramento Business Journal is reporting that the flying car company Moller has posted a loss of $1.2 million for its last three quarters. If you’ve followed flying car news at all in the past three decades, you’re probably familiar with Paul Moller and his line of totally-not-vaporware vehicles. Somehow, Moller gets a major news…

Terrafugia Transition Flying Car May Finally Take Flight

The Terrafugia Transition Flying Car has been around for more than five years. Everyone hoped it would debut in 2009, but that never happened. Now in 2011, the car is inching closer to its first real flight. https://gizmodo.com/transition-personal-air-vehicle-to-fly-by-2009-155483 In a big step forward, the Transition has received an exemption from the National Highway Traffic Safety…

Who Wants a Flying Car? Chitty Chitty Bang Bang‘s Car Up For Grabs

Provided you have a million or two in your pocket, you could be flying off into the the sunset with your very own Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car. Starring in the 1968 film, based on Ian Fleming’s novel, the car not only runs perfectly, but it’s fully road-worthy too. It’s going up for auction in…

Evidence that the cars of the present are letting our grandparents down

This hopeful illustration from the December 1930 issue of Modern Mechanics predicted that future fellows and flappers would fly around in this highfalutin flivver. Look out your window. I see no half-crop-duster-half-jalopies whizzing around. Sorry, readers of 1930. [Spotted on Modern Mechanix]

The Mind Behind the Flying Car’s Design

As strange as it is to say, we really do live in a world with a flying car. And a few decades from now, when we’re all ditching gridlock for the open skies, we can partly thank Jens Martin Skibsted. https://gizmodo.com/faa-exemption-moves-flying-car-closer-to-road-ready-5573552 Skibsted and his firm are responsible for the Terrafugia flying car’s new design, a…