The Real Reason We Don't Have Flying Cars Yet | Unveiled

The Real Reason We Do Not Have Flying Cars Yet

While some of the technologies that past TV and science fiction promised have now begun to appear… not all have made the grade in real life. Smart glasses and chess-playing super-robots are all well and good, but on the other hand we’re still yet to see the likes of all-terrain hoverboards, instant teleportation, and above all, flying cars. The transport of the future hasn’t quite arrived, but why is that?

This is Unveiled and today we’re taking a closer look at the real reason why we don’t have flying cars yet.

The standard car, comparable to those that cruise all over the planet today, was invented in the 1880s. It wasn’t too long after that, however, that thoughts turned toward taking it into the sky. Humans have long had a fascination with flying, at least since the 1480s and the famous plans for a flying machine called an Ornithopter, drawn up by Leonardo da Vinci. For much of the twentieth century, that fascination turned to expectation, however, with flying cars constantly tipped as the next big thing. TV shows like “The Jetsons” aired in the 1960s and showed a future where the skies were filled with them. And Henry Ford himself is even said to have predicted the imminent emergence of flying cars as early as in the 1920s. So where are they? At first glance, the technology isn’t exactly out of reach. We’ve had cars on roads for close to 150 years, and we learned how to fly more than 100 years ago… so it doesn’t seem like combining the two should be such a challenge. And yet, not one commercially available flying car has ever made it to market. What’s really holding them back?

When asked about the seeming no-show of flying cars in the modern world, the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast in 2018, pointed out that, to some degree, they do already exist… saying; “They’re called helicopters”. Tyson goes on to highlight at least one reason why they’re not as prevalent as we might want them to be, however, explaining that they’re “noisy”. Someone could quite easily put wheels on a helicopter and give it the ability to drive, then… but it wouldn’t make much sense to do so. To create enough power for lift off, an object as heavy as a car needs massive propulsion… which results in a machine that’s loud, potentially difficult to pilot, and damaging to the world around it, too, thanks to the strong gusts pushing out of it. That it can be done, though, shows that simply “technology” isn’t the real reason that we don’t have flying cars. Working prototypes have even been developed and tested already. Instead, it’s because they’re, at best, too inconvenient for wider use… at worst, too dangerous to consider.

Of course, many accidents unfortunately already occur, with just regular vehicles. In 2021 alone more than 40,000 people died in car crashes in the US, according to the Department of Transportation. Approximately 1.3 million die annually worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. And today’s cars can only really travel in two dimensions… so imagine how bad accidents could be if they took place in the sky, as well. Major airplane crashes are almost always guaranteed to be fatal because the chances of surviving a fall from such heights are slim. So, although most versions of a flying car operate at much lower altitudes, in a future with more and more airborne vehicles clogging the skies, there’d be so much more air traffic to watch out for. And, predictably, so many more crashes to contend with. Even a simple mechanical issue could feasibly prove fatal. In standard cars, you just pull over to the side of the road and fix it… but in flying cars, you potentially plummet out of the sky and into the ground. Which is never good. The range for human error lengthens, too, and the consequences grow worse and worse. There’s little doubt that the switch to flying cars would be extremely challenging, given that the flying of planes requires an entire and dedicated career move. Many hours of practice, and thousands of dollars to be licensed. Make flying cars commercially available, then, or for use by the public over populated areas, and the potential for serious problems is clear.

There aren’t only the more obvious safety concerns to consider, though. As with almost any other new-fangled anything, flying cars would start out as an extremely exclusive technology. A machine capable of flight is generally very expensive to build. And, if they were to require extensive training to use, then they’d also be extremely costly to get off the ground to begin with. One company that’s already developing plans for flying cars, Aeromobil, has said that if its “Aeromobil 4.0” model were ever to be certified by the government for flight, it would cost around $1.3 million dollars to buy and require a pilot’s license to fly. Perhaps there just isn’t the call (or need) for flying cars, then, when the world’s richest can just as well buy regular private planes, instead. Especially as, despite all their exclusivity, flying cars would likely still be subject to strict rules and regulations - and for good reason.

The pipe dream stereotype suggests unbridled freedom, but the reality would perhaps be quite different. Constant air traffic control notifications; flying only in pre-authorized lanes in the sky; and speed limits perhaps even lower than those on the ground. High speed flying car chases, as cool as they sound, would be so much more dangerous for everyone involved. While road rage (or air rage) could quickly have disastrous consequences for all parties as well as everything that just so happens to be below them at the time. The potential damage to infrastructure would drastically rise with airborne vehicles. And flying car accidents would often involve large office buildings, towers, bridges, and stadiums. It’s easy to see, then, why so many rules would be necessary… even if those rules could ultimately destroy the flying car experience.

Perhaps what it boils down to is that flying cars are a technology that humans can’t be trusted to use en masse. The idea of one or two of them dotting the horizon is certainly possible, but could we ever really get to flying cars being commonplace? Nevertheless, and whatever your opinion, some companies are committed to making airborne vehicles a reality. Although, many are seeking a compromise by developing them to be fully autonomous, without a human driver. The aerospace company Airbus, for example, is reportedly planning fully automated flying taxis - with prototypes by 2023 and a full service up and flying by 2025. Rideshare brand Uber has also invested in the possibility of flying taxis, partnering with the aircraft company Joby Aviation to develop an “electric vertical take-off and landing” aircraft (or, eVTOL) that will operate something like a helicopter but should be much quieter. If all goes to plan, these taxis might even be able to reach top speeds of between 200 and 250 miles per hour... while Uber (and others) are also said to be scoping locations to build their own “sky-ports”, too, as infrastructure.

But, what’s your verdict? Is this an exciting version of the future, or one that fills you with dread? Will you be booking driverless flying taxis, if they ever become a reality? For now, it would seem that flying cars are still on their way, but with an asterisk next to them. They could well be driven remotely or by robots, and not humans. Unfortunately, this isn’t “The Jetsons”... and in real life we’ve proven just with traditional cars that we’re very prone to accidents. We’ve also come to realize that a population that flies literally everywhere they want to is a logistical headache choked with red tape. And that’s the real reason why we don’t have flying cars yet.