Flyin' Car?

This story is a year old, but I missed it last time. I don't know how I came across it now.

The bad news: As you can tell from the video below, this isn't even a prototype yet. All the pictures are mock-ups, and the video is CGI. The actual plane, the Terrafugia TF-X (the X stands for "Awesome"), is ten years away.

The good news: The company has made flyin' cars before, or, actually, "roadable aircraft," which are just planes that can drive on a highway. I don't really count these as a flyin' car, because, well, they look like planes even when they're on the ground. But the company is at least putting out product.

They've also got a contract from DARPA to make a "flying Humvee" so they can't be total morons.

Better news: the proposed vehicle, in the video below, is also a roadable aircraft, but it looks a bit more like a car to me, so I'm going to count it as an odd-looking and early-model genuine flyin' car.

Even better news: It's a VTOL so you can skip the trip to the airport. The ability to take off from anywhere -- not just an airstrip -- is really a must-have for me, as far as my own flyin' car checklist. If you have to drive to an airport (or have some other convenient airstrip to take off from and land on), then what's the point of having a roadable aircraft? You can just as easily park a car at the airport and then fly your plane.

It doesn't really seem to give the driver that freedom that a real flyin' car does -- the ability to literally just pull off the road and take off into the sky on a whim. Or to land wherever he likes (within reason) by his destination and drive the rest of the way there.

The TF-X, if it is ever made, will cost probably a half a million dollars, if not more.

A Bonus Is This Something? under the fold.

Is This Something? Hey, how about a movie about one of the first superheroes ever.

If I remember right, this cartoon made him more explicitly a comic-book superhero, giving him a magic ring that transformed him from Zero to Hero.

By the way I hated that cartoon. But that theme song runs through my head on occasion.

My life is awful.

posted by Ace at 07:00 PM

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