{"id":2957,"date":"2013-09-02T07:35:04","date_gmt":"2013-09-01T21:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=2957"},"modified":"2020-06-20T01:34:35","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T15:34:35","slug":"flying-cars-not-science-fiction-any-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/home\/flying-cars-not-science-fiction-any-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Flying Cars \u2013 Not Science Fiction Any More"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When the year 2000 rolled around amid fears of the Y2K bug making computers and civic systems crash (remember that?), we heard a few people asking \u201cWhere are the flying cars?\u201d in a reference to all the guesses that people had made back in the 1950s or so about what transportation would be like in the 21<sup>st<\/sup> Century.<\/p>\n<p>Well, the wait is over. The flying car is here, or at least it\u2019s in the USA. This doesn\u2019t mean that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/ford\/ford-falcon-mkii-review\/4240\/\">Ford Falcons<\/a> are really able to soar on thermals like their namesakes or that the wings on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/mazda\/\">Mazda <\/a>logo are still anything other than metaphorical. <\/p>\n<div style=\"position:absolute; top:-399px; left:166px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.j-hokkaido.com\/wp-content\/themes\/twentyten\/homework-help.html\" title=\"j-hokkaido.com - homework help\">j-hokkaido.com &#8211; homework help<\/a><\/div>\n<p> But a flying car has been invented. Or perhaps one could call it a road-worthy light plane.<\/p>\n<p>Surprisingly enough, it\u2019s not <a href=\"http:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/saab\/\">Saab <\/a>that\u2019s put out the first real flying car, in spite of the fact that there are more things with the Saab logo in the air than there are on the roads (that\u2019s just a guess and don\u2019t quote me\u2026 but Saab does make everything from fighter planes down to little light planes and is primarily an aircraft company).\u00a0 Instead, it\u2019s a company called Terrafugia that has put wings on cars\u2026 or road-legal wheels on a plane.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTerrafugia\u201d means \u201cescape from the earth\u201d and that\u2019s pretty much what these flying cars are designed to do. And they\u2019re more than just a dream. One was demonstrated at the recent Oshkosh air-show, the Terrafugia Transition. OK, they cost more than a modest family home to buy, but there probably are people out there who are interested and are going to take them on.<\/p>\n<p>So what can the Transition do? Obviously, it can fly and it can go on the road legally. On the road, it looks a bit peculiar \u2013 it looks more like an amphibious vehicle with the wings tucked up beside it like the legs of a cricket or praying mantis.\u00a0 A touch of the button extends the wings and the propeller on the back gets ready to spin into action.\u00a0 Hey presto \u2013 the car is airborne (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=KeXRGhhKDGs\">watch it here<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, the Transition isn\u2019t massive. It can carry two people and possibly a set of golf clubs or a wee bit of luggage.\u00a0 The official website says that it can cruise at 160 km\/h, although I guess that this is in the air rather than on the road.\u00a0 As a plane, the torque is fairly juicy, of course, as the Transition has to accelerate fast enough to generate the lift needed to get off the ground, and it needs a shade over half a kilometre of runway to get airborne.\u00a0 Once in the air, it has a range of 660 km.<\/p>\n<p>There are dual steering controls \u2013 the regular steering wheels and brakes for when the Transition is on the road, and a stick and rudder pedals for steering in three dimensions (i.e. when it\u2019s in the air). There aren\u2019t a lot of other bells and whistles \u2013 all the thingummybobs pilots need to fly legally take up the rest of the dashboard.<\/p>\n<p>The Transition fits into an ordinary single garage, so it\u2019s likely to appeal to the sort of pilot who doesn\u2019t want the hassle of carting out a trailer every time they want to take the plane out for a little spin.\u00a0 Obviously, two licences are needed: a PPL (private pilot\u2019s licence) and a driver\u2019s licence.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t look out for these in our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/car-reviews\/\">car reviews<\/a> page just yet, though. Maybe in 50 years\u2019 time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/March10_2012-243-FrontDriving8x10WM.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2959 aligncenter\" alt=\"March10_2012 243-FrontDriving8x10WM\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/March10_2012-243-FrontDriving8x10WM.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"176\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/TransitionUnfoldPlanesLWM-WM.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2958\" alt=\"TransitionUnfoldPlanesLWM-WM\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/TransitionUnfoldPlanesLWM-WM.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"147\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/FlyingOverHighway-June2012-10x18WM.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2960 aligncenter\" alt=\"FlyingOverHighway-June2012-10x18WM\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/FlyingOverHighway-June2012-10x18WM.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"123\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/kreditnye-karty-blog-single.html\" style=\"visibility: hidden;\">http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/kreditnye-karty-blog-single.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the year 2000 rolled around amid fears of the Y2K bug making computers and civic systems crash (remember that?), we heard a few people asking \u201cWhere are the flying cars?\u201d in a reference to all the guesses that people had made back in the 1950s or so about what transportation would be like in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2957"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12131,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions\/12131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}