During the 1960s, everyone seemed to think that by 2022, we’d all have flying cars, just like the Jetsons, though, frankly, I preferred the British TV show, Supercar. “Where’s my flying car?” has become a catchphrase for the failure of visions of a better future to appear. It’s also the name of a book by J. Storrs Hall, which examines technological progress over the past 60 years. To quote the book blurb, “Fast-forward 60 years, and we’re still stuck in traffic in gas-guzzling sedans and boarding the same types of planes we flew in over half a century ago. What happened to the future we were promised?” Hall concludes that there’s no technological reason that we don’t have flying cars, but rather that technological advancement (including those flying cars) has mired down due to centralized funding and overregulation.
Since the mid-19th century, per-capita energy in the U.S. has grown each year, until 1975, when it effectively flatlined. That coincides with the oil crisis of the mid-1970s which caused us to all get more energy efficient. Though we’re making better use of energy in heating our homes and driving our cars, there aren’t new technologies which are driving the need for more (presumably renewable) energy. We’re stagnating, technology-wise, Hall argues in his book.
This echoes a point raised by Erza Klein in his New York Times editorial, “What America Needs Is a Liberalism That Builds.” Klein wrote, “We need to build more homes, trains, clean energy, research centers, disease surveillance. And we need to do it faster and cheaper.” I was somewhat astounded to read that the Empire State Building was built in less than a year! He echoes Hall’s point that in the U.S. today, it’s hard to get things built.
Be that as it may, there are people who are trying to bring me my flying car. Four years ago, I was working in downtown San Francisco, and a new startup called Lift Aircraft (liftaircraft.com) was selling 15-minute demo flights on their Hexa aircraft for $200. The Hexa is representative of a new class of flying machine based on the technology we’ve become familiar with in smaller drones: electric power, multiple individual blades and motors, and software which offloads much of the details of flying straight and level (and even landing) from human operators. The Hexa holds one passenger in an enclosed space: think of an egg with open sides and a clear front window. That “egg” sits on top of four pontoons (which contain the batteries). Above the egg, arranged on a six-sided ring (hence, “hexa”), are 18 electric motors powering the propellers, which provide lift.
Alas, four years later, I have yet to take my ride. (Although Lift assures me that they haven’t forgotten about me—they sent me a nice hat.) But Anderson Cooper has. The Hexa was featured in a segment on 60 minutes in April. (You can find the video on YouTube.) As Cooper points out, “Federal, state, and local regulators, not to mention the nation’s airspace, aren’t ready for hundreds of thousands of commuters piloting their own [aircraft] over the nation’s cities.” For the time being, Hexa is licensed as an ultralight aircraft, subject to few restrictions, though you can’t fly over populated areas. I’m hoping to take my ride later this year, but who knows. At a reported price of $500,000 dollars, there won’t be one in my garage.
For a mere $92,000, you can buy a Jetson One (getting on the waiting list for a 2023 delivery requires a $20,000 deposit). The Jetson is made by a Swedish startup of the same name. (Check out the video at jetsonaero.com.) There’s a seat in an open frame, with stubby arms fore and aft that support the eight individual motors and props. Unlike the Hexa, which is quite imposing, the Jetson One is like a motorcycle that flies. Watching the video really makes me want to own one of these, just as soon as I hit the Powerball.
Perhaps the strangest concept is the Zeva Zero (zevaaero.com), which is literally a one-person flying saucer. It stands vertically to enter, and then flies flat – you fly on your stomach. But the finishing touch is the Skydock, which hugs the side of a high-rise building. To quote the Zeva website, “SkyDock reduces your troubles such as the space for a parking lot and the distance between your office and vehicle.”
The sad truth is that these Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing vehicles (eVTOLs) are too expensive to replace the family car. eVTOLs will either be expensive toys, or, in multi-passenger versions, used as air taxis. American Airlines and others are already partnering with Vertical Aerospace to develop the idea.
The regulatory hurdles will eventually be overcome, and EVTOL air taxis may well become reality in the next decade. For now though, my dream of a flying car remains just that.
