Uber unveiled a new design for its futuristic “aerial taxi” at the second annual Uber Elevate conference today. And judging by the concept art, Uber is still trying to figure out how to make electric vertical take off and landing (eVTOL) a practical reality. The company’s latest design looks like the Spruce Goose of…
On Monday, video surfaced on Reddit showing a SkyRunner “flying car” crashing into a building. And while the video is certainly horrifying, there wasn’t any context for the accident—just the typical Reddit jokes. But we just learned more from SkyRunner. Thankfully, both the pilot and the passenger survived.
When Uber first announced its flying taxi project last April, the ride-hailing service said it would begin testing the aircrafts in Dubai and Texas by 2020. Now, the company responsible for making the vehicles that may help bring Uber’s Jetsonian vision to life has provided its take on when we could actually see…
Correction: This story originally overstated NASA’s relationship with the Uber project. It has been updated to better reflect the agency’s involvement. We regret the error.
Have you ever gazed up at the sweeping blue sky and thought, God, it’s boring up there? It seems like Sebastian Thrun—who launched Google’s self-driving car program and is the CEO of the flying car startup Kitty Hawk—sure has. On Tuesday, he shared his vision of a sky clogged with tons and tons of glorious soaring…
Here at Paleofuture, we’ve been waiting for our flying cars for over a decade. (Seriously, I can’t believe I started this blog back in 2007.) But this isn’t exactly the kind of flying car we had in mind.
After spending 40 years and unspeakable amounts of investor money to make his dream a reality, Paul Moller’s flying car is finally available for purchase. But because flying cars are perpetually “just two years away,” Moller is actually auctioning off his original prototype, not a production model.
When the world is descending into chaos, it can be hard to believe that optimistic visions of the future are within our reach. But personally, I think I’ve hit that point where escapist fantasy worlds of tomorrow are the only thing that can ease the stresses of our modern world. This 1923 illustration, for instance,…
Flying cars have been a sci-fi prediction since rubber first hit the road with the street automobile, but the fantasy of flying cars has always been just that—a fantasy. For some reason, Uber thinks it can transform this pie-in-the-sky concept into actual vehicles cruising through the air.
Back in March of 2015, I wrote a blog post proclaiming that I would “literally eat the sun” if this AeroMobil flying car was released by 2017. Well, today, the company announced a new flying car that will be on display later this month. But I’m not grabbing my knife and fork just yet.
Are flying cars just “one to three years” away? Probably not. But that’s the claim being made today by Uber’s latest hire—a man who promises that flying cars are just around the corner. Just two more years, guys!
Having long since abandoned his mission of making science fun in favor of sucking the same out of everything else, perpetual opinion machine Neil deGrasse Tyson delivered another thermally radiant take this weekend, suggesting, mayhap, t’was Sports Ball killed the skycar.
Engineers in Tokyo are attempting to build a flying car that will help light the Olympic cauldron in 2020. And even though they still have a few years, it’s a race against time to achieve what so many other flying car designers have failed to do: Build a safe and reliable flying machine that can handle both the skies…
I mean, if we’re going to eventually get flying cars (we won’t ever get flying cars, you fools), we can technically fly them in any goddamn direction we want, right?Which means, why the hell not flip the car upside down and fly around New York with the road as your roof and the sky as the ground.
The flying car is just one of a group of futuristic technologies that are like science’s White Whales—along with jetpacks and a machine that can record our dreams (just me?). Plenty of startups have tested their own versions and now, one major company says that future will be here sooner than you think.
Forget self-driving cars. For years now Google co-founder Larry Page been thinking ahead by personally—and secretly—investing in two start-ups that promise something much more exciting: flying cars.
Sleek, personal vehicles that sail through cities on invisible highways are a staple of science fiction, from Star Wars to Blade Runner to The Fifth Element to Futurama to The Jetsons to....well, you get the idea. This is clearly something we expect and demand of our future. A startup in Germany is trying to build one.
John Kasich held a town hall meeting in Mansfield, Ohio this weekend where he told a crowd the one thing we’ve been waiting to hear from a presidential candidate: The flying car is on its way.
Is the world of autonomous single-passenger drones just over the horizon? Will you be commuting like George Jetson next year? Today, a Chinese company called EHang made a splashy announcement at CES promising just that. But consider us skeptical.
Grandpa had a horse. Father, a horseless carriage. Today —and tomorrow— you will have wings. — Print ad circa 1946 for Alcoa Aluminum via X-Ray Delta