15 replies to this topic

[Absolute]

I've been following the creation of this technology for a little while but find when i talk to others about it they have never heard of it. A company called Moller International has created a car that can actually hover and fly. NASA has been working on a project with other agencies to work out "skyways" for years. This creation takes use to the skyways. You drive it to a local take-off area and dial in the phone number or the street address of where you want to go and then your off. It is computer operated and each car has a chip that keeps every car a certain distance from eachoter to deter accidents. The driving gas mileage is nothing to scream about but traffic is non existent.

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Can any automobile give you this scenario? From your garage to your destination, the M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 275 MPH (maximum speed of 375 MPH) and achieve up to 20 miles per gallon on clean burning, ethanol fuel. No traffic, no red lights, no speeding tickets. Just quiet direct transportation from point A to point B in a fraction of the time. Three dimensional mobility in place of two dimensional immobility.

Right now the price is $500,000 to get on the waiting list. But with other car companies eventually jumping on this I'm sure the price will drop.

http://www.moller.com/skycar/

[GarnerNC]

Absolute, on May 26 2006, 09:07 PM, said:

I've been following the creation of this technology for a little while but find when i talk to others about it they have never heard of it. A company called Moller International has created a car that can actually hover and fly. NASA has been working on a project with other agencies to work out "skyways" for years. This creation takes use to the skyways. You drive it to a local take-off area and dial in the phone number or the street address of where you want to go and then your off. It is computer operated and each car has a chip that keeps every car a certain distance from eachoter to deter accidents. The driving gas mileage is nothing to scream about but traffic is non existent.
Right now the price is $500,000 to get on the waiting list. But with other car companies eventually jumping on this I'm sure the price will drop.

http://www.moller.com/skycar/

Sounds very intresting im sure ford or chevy will definitly make it and sell it cheaper

[Arigato]

I've seen this car quite a few times on the television. The creator is really optimistic about the project and expects the skycar to become widely used in only a few years. The skycar is very neat but imagine if normal cars were to be replaced by these, the entire sky would be filled with high speed vehicles. At the speeds it can travel it would probably be difficult to control and accident rates would probably go up.

[grnjd]

If it is computer operated and controlled, then the accident rate will stay at a minimune. I hope that they came out with a few cheap ones soon, sounds like fun driving one

[rvalkass]

That looks pretty cool, but no matter how much technology they put into it there are bound to be collisions and crashes, expecially if people get manual control of something doing 375mph in open air. If they do hit the mainstream market, what would you need to drive one? A drivers licence or a pilots licence? And where would you get the clean ethanol fuel from?

[hulunes]

hoo,it is really a nice car.i have not heard this kind of car which is feasible.this car named M400 Skycar which can cruise comfortably at 275 MPH (maximum speed of 375 MPH) and achieve up to 20 miles per gallon on clean burning.it is a pretty performance for a flying car at present.
a little curious is about the licence of this car belongs to land traffic or air traffic? it is a interesting pemit.

[sportytalk]

I also haven't heard of this flying car or seen it advertised on television before, although I imagine at some point in the near future, cars that fly in the sky really will be a reality.

There is this problem of finding the primary sources needed to run the car at the moment, although as time progresses and more of these cars come out on the market, there's bound to be more locations where you can pick up the relevant fuels etc, which are needed for the car to run.

I personally would like to see space cars out on the market, as I feel with modern life, most of the space on the ground has been taken up by giant factories and new buildings meaning that there's less road space for the ever increasing amount of cars being produced. I feel space would provide more space in which to drive.
I imagine that there could be a problem with crashing though, especially if too many of these cars go in the air at the same time. I know they're meant to have this special computer card that can detect where the nearby cars are located and can stop crashing, but what if it actually crashes and the passengers go tumbling out of their car, full speed and kill themselves by the heavy fall? This same problem could occur if there's a breakdown whilst high up in the air. The car would just fall down full speed with gravity.

I'm pretty sure these problems will be looked into before the fully functional flying car is produced. Can't wait to see one!

Edited by sportytalk, 27 May 2006 - 09:03 PM.

[Ishmayeck]

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(Still for the time being, the operator will need to have a private pilot's license until the ease of operation and safety are thoroughly demonstrated.)

Yes I remember this little piece of technology, I found it on one of my first google searches... personally I think it's inevitable for the automobile to be replaced with something like this. And about the crashes... wouldn't three-dimensional travel allow them to be spread out enough not to crash? And still most people probably won't be able to afford them for quite a while...

[Absolute]

The accident rate is "supposed" to be non exixtent. Each car is equipped with a chip that keeps every car in the sky at a certain distance from eachother. I can see this going wrong in a few ways. What if the car is struck by lightning? An electircal surge will definately fry the chip. Then again planes get struck all the time and they aren't falling from the sky in enormous numbers. It is also supposed to make sitting in traffic non existent too. Every car will keep a certain distance and every car will go the same speed so no traffic.

[Plenoptic]

So what happens when cops are chasing a car in the sky and they can't ram it off the road. What road? They can't get near them either. They would have to have something to disable their car or something so they can't get away.