Air traffic control will suddenly take on a whole new meaning. Before this or any other street-legal aircraft "takes off" (pardon the pun), two things become gilt-edged priorities:

1. Who owns the sky? Who therefore has the right to direct or toll traffic in it?

2. How do you assess the risks, to the pilot, to other pilots, and to people on the ground, of creating such a large class of amateur pilots so rapidly?

The Objectivist solution to the second problem is easy enough. In the USA, Underwriters' Laboratories could take over all regulatory functions of all agencies. UL are the primary risk assessors for the entire insurance industry for consumer electrics and electronics. If we abolish government regulation today, UL could start to take that over tomorrow.

The first will be much harder to iron out. Rand's treatment of electronic airwaves suggests a possible solution. But even she never dreamt of ordinary people flying VTOL aircraft--else Dwight Sanders would have designed one, and it would have been very useful to the Galt's Gulch Air/Land Militia in its rescue of John Galt.

Any ideas?

I wish the future would hurry up and arrive. I'm getting impatient.

It's not a flying car. It's an electric short range helo replacement. (Wings are fixed and much too wide for a single highway lane. As you stated no ground travel whatsoever.) The alleged advantages appear to be unrelated to being electric.Any bet they are getting looter funding because it is electric, not real fuel? A gasoline powered version might be possible with longer range, lighter weight but it's still not a car;^).

Offers remote access in a hurry. I would need a two seater with the stealth option please.

When I was a youngster I watched Jerry Anderson's "Supercar" and love the idea of a flying car. I still think it is a viable concept. If this German prototype can be classified as a ultra-light craft it could have a chance at being marketed in the US. I like the idea that it's electric but again you still a problem of flying range and where to recharge. There is another American inventor that ha be trying to build an air car using rotary gas engines set in moveable nacelles. So far, he hasn't succeeded in any real flight time. I still would love to have a flying "Supercar".

I could do all that in a Piper Cub. (slight sarcasm)

These will likely be flying robots, since air traffic in an urban area will need automatic control. Climb in, punch in your destination, and it navigates for you.

Until the glass electrolyte battery technology is commercially available, the range will be short. Estimates are that the glass lithium battery will have 20 times the energy density of lithium batteries today, and we'll see an explosion of electric vehicles of all types when those are available.

Next step, folding wings and now we're talking. How long did it take the Wright Brother's idea to catch on?

At least I could carry my gun with me..............

way cool...posted to facebook

Why not ground travel? Even if this were restricted to near-surface use, flying at 10' above the ground over unpaved (but perhaps marked or electronically tagged) surfaces would be very useful.

It would mean that you could ride a fence line or monitor livestock or build a roadless house in the wilderness.

Jan

I have a colleague who is a fan of this and invests and serves on the board of a company trying to do something similar. Apparently its very tricky to transition from helicopter aerodynamics to a plane's. If they could get it working, though, its first application would be medical helicopters in rural areas where higher speed is desirable.