Mass-Produced
I want to see these masses who can pay the million :)
this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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A million doesn't get you what it used to, and you'd be shocked at how many quiet millionaires there are out there.
There might be a lot more millionaires than before, but it’d still be a much smaller number who could drop $1M on a flying car.
It's cheaper than a private jet and there are LOADS of them buzzing around polluting the skies.
That may be true, but private jets are significantly more practical than this. If you've got private jet money, you can just afford to buy a jet and a decent car at your destination.
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an assembly line that can make 2 per year still qualifies as mass production. At the level of people who can afford a million you can't sell more than a couple per year anyway. There are a few car companies that have production numbers in that range.
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It’s not a flying car. It’s an airplane.
It's by definition trying to merge two opposite specs into one vehicle using the worst aspects of the two.
“The AirCar fulfills a lifelong dream to bring the freedom of flight into the hands of everyday people.”
The price? Between $800,000 and $1 million, depending on specs.
Don't forget the cost and time investment in getting your pilots licence.
Also there is no way this is going to be legal to drive on public roads in most countries - just look at the massive tail boom that sticks out. This is just a fancy aircraft for people that want an overcomplicated Cessna.
The tail boom is massive compared to a sports car but I think the folded-up package looks not bigger than a giant American SUV.
Speaking as one who routinely has trouble parking a motor home and driving over curbs with it — this big awkward-looking vehicle doesn’t look like a great city-car but it does not compete with motor homes for the awkwardness prize.
I couldn’t find specs skimming through the article, but it doesn’t look like it would fit in any normal parking space. Driving around might be as unwieldy as a motorhome or box truck, without the height advantage when you inevitably drive over a curb while turning. Doing that might also make it un-airworthy.
What's crazy is you can build a kit plane for less than what this costs, and flying a kit plane does NOT need a pilot license in the US.
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I feel like "mass-produced" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Also, insurance is going to be insane.
Also “car” - can my local mechanic service it and give it a flying certificate? If not, it’s not a car.
More like a barely road-worthy airplane.
You don't get insurance on these
Yeah, I too once thought flying cars were the best idea since sliced bread. I've since grown up and realized that they're just airplanes with extra steps, cause it's not like you're ever going to be able to land it on a highway or whatever. It will always be cheaper to just buy an airplane and a car and use one to get to the other.
I guess the problem is that if you take your car to the plane, then your plane somewhere else, suddenly you don't have your car. And then if you drive somewhere else you don't have your plane any more.
I think it's pretty obvious that rental cars and commercial flights make a lot more sense for most scenarios. But I guess it's possible to imagine scenarios where this vehicle makes sense, either for extensive round trips or for places where car rentals don't exist but the roads are nevertheless pretty good.
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The vehicle, certified for airworthiness and flight-tested over 170 hours with more than 500 takeoffs and landings, is now headed for mass production.
Jesus fuck please tell me that's a typo and they left some zeros off. Your average commercial pilot has more than that before any airline is even willing to consider hiring them, that is absolutely not sufficient testing.
Still, early adopters may face bureaucratic turbulence. Potential buyers must be both licensed drivers and certified pilots.
No shit. And that is never going to change, becoming a certified pilot is a lot fuckin harder than getting a driver's license, and for very good reasons. If some BMW-driving cunt can't even be arsed to use his turn signal do you really want to ease the "bureaucratic turbulence" just so he can fuck up and crash into a packed airliner? These things still have to use runways, the people flying them still need to know how to behave themselves at airports, how to identify and avoid restricted airspace, how to communicate with ATC and how to behave if (let's be honest, when) they get Intercepted.
And all of this so you can have a car that's worse at being a car, and an airplane that's worse at being an airplane, but hey at least you won't have to book a rental car at your destination airport, which I remind you they still have to use.
As long as they're only using smaller airports. Let the millionaires and billionaires have this. It's like another ocean gate scenario.
I agree with everything you're saying though haha.
The ocean depths arent above innocent people's heads.
I still don't get how these companies keep getting funded. There's literally no way these things will ever become a thing. It's simply ridiculous.
I'd be willing to bet if you put a calendar reminder in one year to check back on this you'd find that this car did not actually reach the mass-produced stage of industry.
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a plane. A flying car is called a plane.
I bet it handles like a boat on the roads though.
A plane that looks a bit like a car.
Or you could buy a Skyhawk, three Toyota Camrys and fuel for a year.
So it's a small plane then?
I swear I saw this on TV like 20 years ago, it's a stupid idea, if I wanted a plane I would buy a plane and then drive to the airport in my car, attempting to combine the two technologies just makes both of them worse.
It’s called a plane.
I don't trust must drivers on roads, much less the air. No good will come of this.
I am driving through a slight detour on my commute, it's still 3 lanes but with a slight bend, motherfuckers can't even keep their car in their fucking lane, almost hit 3 people this morning, fuckers can't drive
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There are street legal autogyros that are a lot cheaper and make more sense as a crossover vehicle
I hope its a popular buy among all our billionaires.
Damn, we really got flying cars before
- GTA 6
- Elder Scrolls 6
- Half Life 3 (but barely? Hopefully?)
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Sweet. We need more ways for the 1% to kill themselves.
Okay I will admit it was impressive to see how they solved where to stow the wings and essentially shrink the airplane footprint to a long car footprint, but who is this for? Who out there has $1mil to blow and is like, "I have to drive directly from the tarmac to my hotel"?
This thing needs 300m of runway in its airplane form to get airborne, so forget city or even suburban takeoffs. And you're not going to just drive this thing around. At the end of the day, this is still a (very fancy) plane that drives.
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We have had helicoptors for all these decades
Oh just like they did 5yrs ago every 5 years since the invention of powered flight
That's not very expensiv...
Seen this like 10 years ago lol
Looks a bit like in "The Man With The Golden Gun"
If wings don’t fold, fold your brain.
What problem does this solve? And is that problem worth all the negatives this brings?
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That's not the "flying car" anyone envisioned or wanted. That's just an airplane but a lot shittier.
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