I made a to-do list today.
- check with Transport Canada
- that it can be registered in Canada
- if it needs separate aviation and car insurance
- check with car insurance company on
- how to insure it
- how to transfer licence plate from old car
- check with aviation insurance company on coverage options
- telephone some US and Canadian airports to find out how to get airside access from the parking lot
- find out from Terrafugia
- available delivery dates
- can I get mine in yellow?
- maintenance schedule/parts requirements
- Design and make silver spandex jumpsuit
- Get asymmetrical spiky haircut
- Get bizarre sunglasses
- Practise using Skype video phone
- Arrange financing (buy lottery ticket)
Did I miss anything?
People, it costs less than a new Cessna 172. And it's a FLYING CAR! How can this not be my new goal?
19 comments:
Very cool. But for me it's more about wanting to take my airplane with me when I travel by road rather than travel on the road with the airplane.
It doesn't show in this video but the ICON is supposed to eventually have amphib landing gear and quickly folding wings ... we'll see:
click here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjE9uQ8Wwew
Don't forget to find a stable for your unicorn. You'll have one of those before these babies hit get delivered.
Design and make silver spandex jumpsuit
As long as you don't end up looking like this guy
I've been a pilot for twenty years, and had wanted an airplane all that time. I finally was able to afford one.
He's Jay Maynard, and the plane is for sale.
One problem is that what would be a routine parallel parking fender dinger in a regular car is an expensive forward stabilizer writeoff for this vehicle.
1. Do you really feel comfortable driving a $150,000 car on roads in Canada? (There are a FEW places in the United States, not in major cities and not out in the countryside, where I would consider it, but not many.) You need gorgeous smooth roads with few other cars so you don't risk going un-airworthy with a sharp edge of a pothole or a fender bender. (I drove a friend's Aston Martin. I think that was $175,000. I went around the block and I sweated the entire time. I was not comfortable with the idea at all.)
2. It's not certified for IFR. How could you do that and still be happy?
Well, that'd be as exactly much use here as any other car! "simply land at the airport" it says. The nearest airstrip to here's further away than the motorway junction. And then you crawl into town with all the other cars.
What I want is an ornithopter: an exoskeleton that'll let me flap five-metre wings from house to work to pub. Black all-weather jumpsuit, third party insurance only available.
So far I haven't heard the Terrefugia folks give a compelling explanation of why folks will buy *this* car/airplane when nobody bought previous certificated car/airplanes.
You never checked about cup holders!
If Aviatrix wants to buy a Terrafugia Transition with her lottery winnings, you guys just leave her be.
For me, two words: Jet Pack (or is it one?)
Shoulder checks must be a real pain in the neck.
I love you guys. Somehow your comments on this entry comprise just the right combination of validation and dissuasion.
Cirrocumulus: in Canada and the US there are far more airstrips than airports with scheduled service, so many people would get the advantage.
SwL_Wildcat: OMG! It's not just a flying car, it's a time machine!
Now what have we got? Flying car, time machine, unicorn, jet pack, ornithopter, amphibious car ... so many choices.
Flying horse.
I'd settle for that, if I can't fly myself. Don't want any stupid machine to do it for me!
This flying car thing reminds me of a futon. Part-time bed, part-time sofa. Yet it does neither very well. Jack of all trades, master of none. I poop on the idea.
"You built a time machine out of a DeLorean?!"
I have to agree, Geekzilla. Not with the pooping, but the sentiment. The Terrafugia doesn't impress me as a good airplane or car. I saw the take-off videos.
The ICON looks sweet though. I saw it fly at Oshkosh last year, and it was an impressive flying boat.
A real revolution in aerial vehicles awaits a compact, reliable electrical storage device. Fuel cells? Nano-batteries / Nano-capacitors? Heck, even Mr. Fusion would change things.
If someone gave me $200k I'd buy a nice Mooney and a collapsable bike/scooter. And lots of fuel & maintenance.
Especially in the evolving environmental situation, landing at a downtown airport would annoy one set of people, then driving on the highway would annoy another set (with some intersection between sets). What we need is an environmentally friendly power source with the energy density to allow for vertical takeoff and landing. With that even a deLorian would be succesful.
Chitty-chitty-bang-bang, eh? How positively.... RETRO!
One thing of note. I seem to remember in some of the promotional/marketing material that it was specifically called a "roadable plane" and not a "flying car." I believe the distinction was made to point out that this is not a car that Chris Consumer buys and then can fly, but rather it is a plane that Pat Pilot buys which just happens to be street legal. The benefit really comes in not having to hanger/tie down the aircraft. Also there is the added benefit of not waiting out a storm so much as driving through it on the freeway, allowing continued forward progress even in IMC.
Not that I have been watching it at all for the last few months thinking of how great it would be to get a pilots license and then one of these...
Yes, they go to an effort to make the roadable airplane concept quite clear, and to point out that it isn't meant to replace anyone's car. But it's hard to hear that over the voice in my head saying, "It's a FLYING CAR!"
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