Why We Don't Have Flying Cars, Yet

Please read before commenting.
Predictive Innovation analysis of Flying Cars and the next natural big innovation for ground based cars. One of the biggest reasons we still don't have flying cars is the the least satisfied Outcome has been ignored. Car makers have focused on the wrong things, thus causing delays in progress.

http://markproffitt.com/books/
http://www.predictiveinnovation.com/

News:
Terrafugia still hasn't shipped Transition but is not working on automated vehicle
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2013/05...

http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/07/te...

Mavrick crashes near school
http://jalopnik.com/experimental-flyi...

Notes:
Terrafugia Transition is not a flying car. Directly from their website It is a roadable aircraft. The reason it isn't a flying car is it doesn't better satisfy the outcomes customers want from a car. It is too small. too expensive, too inconvenient, too dangerous for the average car driver to use the way they use a car. Additionally, all of the components that make the Terrafugia safer are technology that has been around on ground based cars for decades. The video was posted in 2010 and is based on a book published in 2009 which was based on an industry report presented in 2004. Self-driving cars have been on the roads for years. IN 2011 Volvo XC60 with City Safe automatic braking sold 68% more cars in the USA than Chevy Volt, 12,932 units. Toyota has autopark http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqrlN8...
Standford offers a 7 week undergraduate class teaching how to program a self-driving car CS-373, not even a senior level class. So everything occurred precisely as predicted.

Safety ratios:
There is only a loose connection between miles driven and the number of accidents. In fact the more miles a person drives the less likely they are to have an accident. Air bags and other ways of making crashes safer doesn't address the core problem, there are a lot of crashes. That is what need to be fixed to get the big increases in safety cars need. Automation is the only way to do that and it also increases efficiency, speed, and comfort.

Example:
Road fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year
Road fatalities per 100,000 motor vehicles
Road fatalities per 1 billion vehicle-km
Ireland 4.06 __ 7.44 __ 4.9
United Kingdom 3.59 __ 7 __ 5.7
Germany 4.5 __ 7.2 __ 7.2
Canada 9.2 __ 13 __ 8.2
USA 12.3 __ 15 __ 8.5
Austria 8.2 __12 __ 8.9

Even though the USA has a lot more deaths per car it is not much more per miles driven and the ratios are reversed for Ireland and UK. No strong correlations between miles and number of cars and fatalities.

The main problem for safety in cars is a single point of failure, the human. Automation can easily have multiple layers of redundancy. Just 6 layers of rather poor technology that is only 80% reliable would have a total reliability of (1-0.80)^6 = 99.9936%. That is 6.4 per 100,000 more than 2 times as reliable as cars driven by humans in Canada, USA, and Austria.

Any comment about population growth or claim that Terrefugia is a flying car will be deleted because it ignored the facts and misses the point. Please don't waste people's time.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[xoviat]

There is currently one flying car on the market, the terrafugia transition for $200 000. Within less than a year, there should be another, the samson switchblade for $95 000. Your premise is incorrect.

[MarkProffitt]

Terrafugia Transition is still only a prototype. They've been taking down payments for 3 years but still haven't produced a single car. Samson hasn't even built a full scale prototype yet.

Meanwhile various automated cars outsell hybrid electrics. Everything mentioned in this video has all come true exactly as described. And even Terrafugia is focusing automated vehicles now. Read the video description for more details.

[BigApple551]

We have ground cars that drive itself autodrive button on the steering wheel but it will not follow rout just straight and They dont avoid cars and will be stuck at the speed you turned it on on

[MarkProffitt]

Read the description of the video. There are many cars that do steer and and avoid other cars and those sell more than hybrid electrics.

[shadowslayer2011]

And yet the FT-X is made for normal people be able to drive and fly in only 5 hours of trainig

[MarkProffitt]

The Terragia FT-X is only an idea at the moment. It also is following exactly what I said would happen. Read the video description for links to articles about it.

[chanthien99]

It depends on how you achieve "safety". - By better protection -> safer but less fuel-efficient (bigger car costs more to operate) - Or by better prediction -> choosing smarter routes, smarter paths -> safer + _faster_ -> safer + more fuel-efficient.

[MarkProffitt]

Avoiding a crash is the safest thing you can do. A big heavy vehicle tends to be safer for the passenger in a crash but avoiding the crash is safe for the passengers, the vehicle, other cars, pedestrians, animals, trees, & buildings.

A vehicle that never crashes can be light as a feather. All of the fuel is used to move the passengers and cargo instead of moving the armor plating. Sitting in traffic waiting to get around an accident is close to the least fuel efficient thing possible.

[xoviat]

Samson motors has plans for a feasible prototype that will cost less than a comparable cessna. A cessna with two seats costs $150 000, while the samson's flying car is expected to cost $95 000 plus 3 weeks of your time.

[xoviat]

And tesla may render the premise about alternative energy to be also incorrect within a few years.

[taitjones81]

I remember this car from Popular Mechanics 20 years ago.

[Anonymous User]

Fuck cars, increase population density, ride bicycles