With thanks to Dan Gomez for sending me the YouTube link.
It’s a crazy old world but sometimes that craziness provides a relief from the ‘serious’ side to life.
This week the Dutch company PAL-V announced the first flights of its prototype “flying car”.
This unique vehicle is called the PAL-V One, or the ‘Personal Air and Land Vehicle’, and It marks the start of a new era.On the ground the vehicle drives like a sports car. Within minutes its rotor is unfolded and its tail is extended: then it is ready to take off thanks to the advanced gyrocopter technology.
With these successful test results it is proven that it is not only possible to build a flying car but also that it can be done within existing international rules for both flying and driving.
Having passed this important milestone the company is now inviting investors to join them in creating the future.
The next step will be the design of the first commercial production model of the PAL-V, and first deliveries are expected in 2014.
For 100 years people have dreamed of a flying car, and many attempts have been made to realize this dream, but now it has truly become a reality.
Learning from Dogs 
Intriguing. But — if you’ll excuse the pun — I can’t see this ever taking off. Machines go wrong. A car breaking down on a road isn’t (usually) a big problem; but one of these breaking down in flight would mean almost certain death for the occupant, and mayhem wherever the wreckage came down. Given that the intention is clearly a personal transportation box, users would want to use it most frequently in densely populated areas — and if they couldn’t use it there, it’s just an advanced microlight, with the same limited audience.
If I had the money to invest, I wouldn’t sink it into this: I’d be putting it into personal rapid transit. YMMV 🙂
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PS – ah, oops. I see. Yes. Craziness is certainly a relief. Silly me 🙂
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I agree with you but, as your next comment acknowledged, it was only a bit of fun!
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Great news… let us now send all car traffic jams to the sky and keep the road and streets for walking and biking… and perhaps one bus lane… so we do not have to trust the bus-pilot too much or have to be subject to body-searches by unattractive body-searchers.
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Especially after jet fuel has become so expensive the skies have become clear of aircraft! 😉
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This Dutch contraption seems to be more like a (so far) flying helicopter that runs around. An American company has a real flying car, the Terrafugia. It is FAA certified, and that one is for sale (around $280,000 before tax). However it needs 720 meters to take off, from an approved FAA airfield, and it flies barely faster than it drives….
I guess it’s the future, considering the increasing depth and width of the ever more asphalt devouring potholes. It will allow us to fly over them, when SUVs can’t climb the other side.
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