Is this for real or is it some kind of photoshop fantasy plane?
And if it’s real, what is it?
Not sure if they’re ready for purchase yet.
ETA: apparently they’re still in design phase.
Yeah. So is the one I’m going to build. 
The one in the pic is the TF-X, which seems to be very much a concept. In my personal opinion, the wing looks to be too small to be viable.
They also have the Transition, which is actually built, and going through testing. This one seems to have much more realistic proportions, and looks like it would be a blast to use.
I have to agree with most of that. My guess would be that the stall speed of that thing would be about 10 knots higher than it’s top speed.
It amazes me that engineers still continue with this pipe dream of an airplane-car. It’s not a technical problem, it’s a fundamentally flawed idea. The two don’t belong together.
You’re either cynical as hell or you didn’t grow up in the 60’s with all the stories of all the amazing things we were going to have in the 21st century.
I want my flying car god damn it!:mad:
This is why you will never have a flying car
People will not maintain them and they will fall out of the sky.
If you have a vehicle all ready to go when anti-grav is invented, you’re ahead. 
“TF-X™ is Terrafugia’s vision for the future of personal transportation. A four-seat, plug-in hybrid electric flying car with fly-by-wire vertical takeoff and landing…”
Pure bullshit, IMHO.
Yeah, maintenance. Big ball of wax that.
IMO, 95% of today’s drivers can not drive safely without any signs. Think about it, no roads, no road signs, nothing pointing this way or that.
No following I-95 blindly to exit #87.
GPS you say?
Autopilot you say?
And where is this system for every house & driveway in the US much less close ones in Canada or Mexico going to come from?
And who is going to pay for it.
What will the minimum age and amount of training and re-certifying going to be handled?
Even with tremendous gains in tech and automation, think how many folks you know that should never be in control in any measure of a craft like that?
Get an ultra light, stay out in the country and go travel… Yeah, they will be beating down the doors for that…
On day, I think something will be done to get us off the ground and all that road stuff. But * won’t live to see it for sure*…
Ask any pilot you might know, even one who just got his Pvt. Lic. if he wants his mom, his sister to have a flying car or airplane to use.
An interesting thought problem:
Remove all signs from house numbers, street names, speed limits, warning signs, everything. All they have to do is follow the GPS.
And here they all come, with their heads down trying to read the GPS or texting someone who knows where / how to get to where they want to go.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :smack:
QtM once posed the Q of using the strip of pavement that is a road in a non-standard way (using the oncoming lane as a left-turn lane in wide-open space).
Dopers freaked out. You can’t cross a yellow lane! It’s Unsafe!
My guess was that they needed a line painted on the highway to tell them to stay to the right when approaching the crest of a blind hill.
Putting these morons in a plane is a VERY scary idea.
Funny quote from somewhere:
If Harley-Davidson made an airplane, would you fly on it?
The same could be asked for Jeep.
Terrafugia has long been calling their project a “roadable airplane”, not a “flying car”.
That terminology speaks volumes to what they’re doing. They’re trying to build an airplane that doesn’t leave you stranded at the destination airport, dependent on taxis or Avis to finish your journey. There is no expectation anyone other than pilots with pilot mindsets and pilot skill sets and aircraft-owner sized budgets will ever own or use one. This is emphatically *not *a “flying car for the masses”.
The biggest challenge they face right now is the FAA safety regs require a very slow stall speed and low maximum weight. Meanwhile, the NHTSA road safety regs require lots of occupant impact protection which is heavy. Right now they can build a machine which complies with either set of regs but not both.
So they’re working with both agencies to convince them to compromise, or at least to allow them to use novel methods of achieving the same statistical level of safety. The FAA especially is fond of regulations which don’t specify the required result, but instead specify the process / design you must use to achieve the result. Which has the effect of freezing the technology & engineering in the 1950s. Breaking that regulatory mindset once and for all would bring huge dividends to all of aviation, not just the roadable cars part.
And yes, the TF-X is an embarrassment of an artists concept. Those wings will support that fuselage in flight about as well as my arms would support me. The Transition is quite plausible though. As a matter of physics it *can * both fly and drive, just not in compliance with all the human-imposed regulations.
I’ll confidently predict that this and all other “flying car” or “roadable aircraft” designs will never be seen in quantity. The obvious reason is the enormous compromise on performance in both roles imposed by having to do two fundamentally different things, combined with how absurdly cheap (relatively) it is to order up a rental car at any airport you choose. It’s an awkward and expensive (though admittedly interesting) solution to a non-problem.
Another perspective: Imagine a guy who has bought the new flying car design, flies it and seems to be happy with it. Suppose you were to say to him “Here’s a way to put $100,000 in your pocket and improve your flying performance (payload, speed, fuel economy, range, short-field capability, etc.) considerably. It will cost you $60 per day for any day you want to drive on the road.” This would look like an amazing improvement - but all it entails is buying a normal aircraft and renting a car when he needs one.
Yeah, who ever heard of a flying jeep?
I’ve often thought though that when the day comes, far into the future, when we all have flying cars, it will have a massive impact on immigration and national boundaries. In fact national boundaries may effectively cease to exist. Imagine thousands of flying cars entering and leaving countries at all points along the borders - not at fixed entry points like roads or airports or sea ports. It will be impossible to control or police. Especially if the cars are advanced enough to cross oceans.
There will be people from Europe or Africa deciding they want to live in America (or vice versa) so they just get in the car and fly over the Atlantic, land on a road somewhere and off they go.
It’ll be an interesting scenario. Might actually be better than what we have now in some ways if populations can just move around the world as they please.
waiting for anti-gravity myself. Car+plane? Not gonna happen. Not in any type of realistic use. Perhaps fun as a dangerous toy that doesn’t do either job well.
I’ve already flown on my Hog. See, there is this hill near 9th & Highland and…
On the one hand, though the TF-X depiction does look ridiculous and unworkable, there has been some research into lifting body aircraft, where the fuselage itself provides some or all of the lift. Looking at that design, one gets the impression that that might be what they are going for, not to say that they are likely to get it to work.
Also, on the front of really crazy aircraft concepts, there is a design concept called WEAV, which proposes to ionize the air surrounding the craft and use electromagnets to control its flow. Which sounds to me to be about as realistic as Red October.