My comment is too old to edit now, but I just thought of something: I saw a video on youtube awhile back about the making of the original Blade Runner. In it,

My comment is too old to edit now, but I just thought of something: I saw a video on youtube awhile back about the making of the original Blade Runner. In it, they said that PKD did not live to see the film in theaters, but they were able to show him a 10-15 minute "highlight reel", which included shots of the flying cars. PKD said it was like they were reading his mind, it was so accurate. So at least to PKD, the original Blade Runner's flying cars were canon. Not that I think the lack of design evolution between the two films seems too realistic, but given the events that occurred between the two films [0][1], I can see lots of technological progress being lost. Consider the scene in 2049 where K brings in the sample for Rachel and the desk employee says that they lost a lot of data during the blackout, and to not expect much for anything this old. Had all that not happened, I'd completely agree that the design of 2049's flying cars seemed too retro, that they would have pioneered new vehicle layouts by then. [0] https://collider.com/blade-runner-timeline-explained/ https://collider.com/blade-runner-timeline-explained/ [1] https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline Edit: Found the video where PKD seeing the highlight reel is mentioned: https://youtu.be/EByNb7F-A34?t=1556 https://youtu.be/EByNb7F-A34?t=1556 (the whole video is worth a watch, the entirely-analog techniques they used are incredible)