8 ms·

The Pal-V flying car

164 points by pawelwentpawel 14y ago

dreamdu5t 14y ago
The Pal-V One has two seats and a 160 kW flight certified gasoline engine, giving it a top speed of 180 km/h (112 mph) on land and in air, and a Maximum Takeoff Weight of 910 kg. Estimated unit price is around $300,000. Where do I buy one?
- ta12121 14y ago
  That sounds kind of slow, for air travel.
  - bigiain 14y ago
    Rotor craft are limited by a combination of needing the advancing rotor blade stay under mach1[1], and having the retreating blade still moving fast enough[2] still be able to create lift. Flying much faster then 200kmh usually needs tricks like going to more than 2 blades, and exceeding 500knh (where the advancing blade needs to exceed mach1 if the retreating blade isn't moving backwards through the air) required very expensive blades (and becomes outrageously noisy) [1] 'cause breaking the sound barrier along parts but not all of the advancing blade makes things complicated and expensive. [2] and keep in mind this is backwards, relative to the body of the helicopter.autogyro
  - spatten 14y ago
    I think it's actually about the same speed as a Cessna or something similar flies, which is pretty impressive if you ask me.
  - starpilot 14y ago
    It is, but you can also fly line-of-sight for the part of your journey that is between airports, shortening the distance, instead of following roads.
- sgt 14y ago
  Exactly my thoughts. Just imagine how this vehicle can cut down your commute. Luckily I have the best commute in the world right now (takes me 8 minutes on a motorcycle and 10 minutes in a car), but that won't necessarily always be the case. Some of my friends commute to the big city and it takes them over 1 hour. This Pal-V One would cut that down to 30 minutes, including takeoff/landing and putting on all that riding/flying gear!
nickpinkston 14y ago
This is very cool - though this type of vehicle should really be called a "roadable-plane". The real dream of the flying car is having the utility of a car (kids, groceries, etc.) with the ability to fly from point-to-point - not drive it on the road. The Jetsons had a flying car without wheels or roadability - that's the ideal. This means the city-friendly / VTOL aspect is waaaay more important than the "fast taxi" approach being taken. The Moller M400 (I know vaporware) seemed A LOT closer to this. Of course, the design of this vehicle makes more sense for today: land on a small runway on the outskirts of town, and then drive to your real location. This saves a ton of energy and seemingly works okay with existing infrastructure - assuming your city has a nearby airstrip.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  I would easily trade my motorcycle for this, though.
- lotharbot 14y ago
  The "real dream of the flying car" seems to differ from person to person. Some people essentially want a flying machine that they can land in their driveway and parking lots, that they can take to the air for all but the shortest trips, with little need for "car" abilities. Others want something that's a car the majority of the time, but can fly on those midrange (60-600 miles) city-to-city trips. VTOL on city streets is unlikely to be popular any time soon, largely due to safety concerns. But there's been a constant push for decades for something that can take off and land at small airstrips, and with only a few minutes' conversion work, can then drive over to grandma's house. Turning a 6 hour drive into a 3 hour flight would be a big deal.
  - marvin 14y ago
    I'm convinced that what's eventually going to turn the tide for these kinds of vehicles is if we can make a tiltrotor ducted fan thing with adjustable fan geometry _and_ wings. Something like the V-22 Osprey, except with adjustable ducts around the fans. This way, you can get both the high thrust required for takeoff and the low drag required for cruise. Wings are a requirement if you want to keep the fuel consumption low. A vehicle like this wouldn't have comparable cruising speeds to airplanes (something like 80mph cruise), but could take off and land anywhere, and would have higher fuel efficiency than one of today's cars. There are actually canarded airplames today which cruise at 160 knots and use less fuel per mile than a car. I'm actually surprised there isn't more research into these kinds of vehicles, but I guess the Osprey fiasco has everyone running scared.
vibrunazo 14y ago
Self driving cars first. Flying cars second. In that order, cannot happen the other way around. I agree with Erick Schmidt when he said "It's a bug that cars were invented before computers, or else humans would have never driven cars themselves". Hopefully we won't implement the same bug again.
- pawelwentpawel 14y ago
  General safety was the first issue that came to my mind when seeing their website. If a thing like that goes viral we need to consider plenty of idiots on the roads making enough damage as it is already. Imagine giving them just additional angles from which they can crash into each other. However, considering the current speed of research I believe (and hope) that before something like that goes "very" public and popular it will be already automated.
- wavephorm 14y ago
  Self-flying air vehicles like this are probably easier to implement than cars. For simple reasons, such as there being no obstacles like roads, street lights, pedestrians, and because you have a 3rd dimension there is significantly more space so the vehicles can be more spread out. The trip itinerary is a lot easier because you're essentially going from point A to point B in a straight line. Also, starting from day one, you could mandate that no human is allowed to pilot these types of vehicles, so you wouldn't have a mix of human and computer pilots that you have with cars.
  - ericingram 14y ago
    The answer to safety issues should not be a matter of restricting people from operating them. By that mentality, you'd ban a huge range of very useful things.
    - wavephorm 14y ago
      I disagree, restricting humans is exactly what needs to happen for personal air travel to ever to be safe. The humans are the rogues, they're ones that are going to cause problems, not follow standard procedures, drink and fly, check their cellphones while flying etc. Imagine how much uncertainty and risk could be eliminated if you know that 100% of the vehicles in the air are all computer controlled, and use a common communication/navigation protocol. It would simplify everything.
qntmfred 14y ago
As a kid In the early 90s I remember reading Scholastic Magazine at school and reading that flying cars would be available by 1995. I was ecstatic. :-|
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
I love gyrocopters and it was a slick website, so easy upvote from me. $300K is way too steep, though. For that price why not buy a new Cessna and just drive a clunker to the airport? And, for that matter, $300K is way too steep for a Cessna. The amount of money added to planes to cover lawsuits is insane. You end up buying an amount of gear that might sell retail for 30-50K for 10 times that much. I'd love to fly this, but hell, I don't see why I'd paid that much. Even if I were a gyrocopter fanatic, I'd just buy a kit and have it built. It's just way too much money for way too little capability.
- bigiain 14y ago
  "For that price why not buy a new Cessna and just drive a clunker to the airport?" Because when you get to the other end, you're stuck with the "$100 burger" at some out-of-the-way rural airstrip, instead of being able to drive into town and go to the nice pub. You'd have to be quite special for that to be worth $300k on a "toy" though…
- savrajsingh 14y ago
  time for an iconaircraft -- it's half the price and twice as cool.
ww520 14y ago
Nice. I like how they design it to fit in a regular garage. Wonder what's the range and what kind of fuel it uses. Regular unlead 87? A proximity warning radar to warn things nearby would be nice.
- spatten 14y ago
  From here: http://pal-v.com/the-pal-v-one/specifications/ http://pal-v.com/the-pal-v-one/specifications/ Flight specs: Range 350 - 500 km Max speed: 180 km/h Fuel economy: 36 l/h This is 20 l/100 km at max speed (11.76 MPG), so not amazing but not much worse than an SUV (my car, which is average, gets 10 l/100km). Plus you're flying in a straight line which is worth a lot.
rorrr 14y ago
I'd like to see a crash test of this "car". I'm not suicidal enough to drive it on a regular road. In fact, at the $300,000 price you might as well get a lightweight plane ($20K would get you a decent one), and a really nice car for $280,000. Since you can't legally take off and land on a road, there's no real difference.
- eurleif 14y ago
  Being able to fly somewhere and then drive on, without having to rent a car, is a real difference.
  - nradov 14y ago
    Greater availability of car-sharing services like Zipcar at general aviation airports would eliminate much of the need for roadable airplanes.
    - eurleif 14y ago
      True, but the roadable airplane is still more convenient, especially if you have a lot of luggage. It's a luxury item, obviously, but there are people who don't want any hassle, and can afford not to have it.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - rorrr 14y ago
    Park your car at the airport. You will have to land there anyway.
    - eurleif 14y ago
      So own two cars, one at each airport? Or more than two, if you want to fly between more than two places?
- bigiain 14y ago
hoprocker 14y ago
Watch out for fender benders!
- Yxven 14y ago
  Forget fender benders. Your house is now in danger of drunk drivers.
  - damian2000 14y ago
    Or high flyers.
borski 14y ago
Seems a lot like the TerraFugia, albeit with very different style: http://www.terrafugia.com/ http://www.terrafugia.com/
dhughes 14y ago
I've always thought a flying car should be simple not this thing and not the screaming Moller four-engined. My idea was a van-like vehicle that was neutrally buoyant with bladders to control the buoyancy sort of a lifting-body dirigible with wheels Then I see SkyCat it's huge but pretty much the idea I had. I'm 0 for 2 this week for ideas, my subwoofer siren idea apparently has been made too.
spatten 14y ago
From the FAQ: For more densely populated countries, in the future there will be a network of small airstrips near recreational areas along the highway could lead to a much denser infrastructure. The ministry of Traffic in the Netherlands has started testing this concept in anticipation of the arrival of PAL-Vs in traffic. See movie (Link to movie ministry tests PAL-V ports). Wow, they really think that there will be enough people buying these to create a need for large numbers of airstrips? Crazy :).
- Someone 14y ago
  There is some spin in that FAQ. Government is, of course, involved; this thing needs permission to become road- and airworthy. The (meanwhile ex; the video must be from before October 2010) minister of transport also said it could be an option in some markets, and he said that, if these things become used widely, municipailites would have to decide on building such airstrips. He did not say the government was researching that possibility, though. So, all it was was a polite way to say "interesting; we will see whether it will fly (sorry, could not think of a way to make this pun-free. 'will take off' was the alternative I could think of)
10098 14y ago
I know it was dumb, but I was half expecting to see something like cars from the Fifth Element after clicking the link.
gvb 14y ago
Test flight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgHSaNtAMjs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgHSaNtAMjs Cool folding prop (but scary - if it doesn't unfold properly, it could make quite a mess). FWIIW, it is really a flying motorcycle, not a flying car. Three wheeled vehicles (in the USA) are licensed as motorcycles and have hugely lower regulatory (especially safety) requirements.
- dexen 14y ago
  > Cool folding prop (but scary - if it doesn't unfold properly, it could make quite a mess). Hard to tell from the video alone, but the rotor look just like my RC helicopter's: blades attached to the hub by one gudgeon pin each. If that's the case, centrifugal force alone is enough to align them perfectly †; no solenoid nor manual action needed ever. If that's the case, there's virtually no way those could fail, except for total disintegration. Pretty standard construction for small, two-bladed helis. Way cooler is that they can get away without flybar -- perhaps autogyros don't ever need one? † there's some forward-backward play of the blade as it changes attack angle and relative airspeed during rotation, but that's another matter.
bobobjorn 14y ago
I wouldnt call that a flying car, I would call that a car that can turn into a gyro/helicopter.
Sniffnoy 14y ago
Anyone have any idea how noisy it is?
ishkur101 14y ago
A brief history of flying cars. http://inventorspot.com/articles/experiments_flying_cars_6835 http://inventorspot.com/articles/experiments_flying_cars_683...

164 points by pawelwentpawel 14y ago

The Pal-V One has two seats and a 160 kW flight certified gasoline engine, giving it a top speed of 180 km/h (112 mph) on land and in air, and a Maximum Takeoff Weight of 910 kg. Estimated unit price is around $300,000. Where do I buy one?

ta12121 14y ago
That sounds kind of slow, for air travel.
- bigiain 14y ago
  Rotor craft are limited by a combination of needing the advancing rotor blade stay under mach1[1], and having the retreating blade still moving fast enough[2] still be able to create lift. Flying much faster then 200kmh usually needs tricks like going to more than 2 blades, and exceeding 500knh (where the advancing blade needs to exceed mach1 if the retreating blade isn't moving backwards through the air) required very expensive blades (and becomes outrageously noisy) [1] 'cause breaking the sound barrier along parts but not all of the advancing blade makes things complicated and expensive. [2] and keep in mind this is backwards, relative to the body of the helicopter.autogyro
- spatten 14y ago
  I think it's actually about the same speed as a Cessna or something similar flies, which is pretty impressive if you ask me.
- starpilot 14y ago
  It is, but you can also fly line-of-sight for the part of your journey that is between airports, shortening the distance, instead of following roads.
sgt 14y ago
Exactly my thoughts. Just imagine how this vehicle can cut down your commute. Luckily I have the best commute in the world right now (takes me 8 minutes on a motorcycle and 10 minutes in a car), but that won't necessarily always be the case. Some of my friends commute to the big city and it takes them over 1 hour. This Pal-V One would cut that down to 30 minutes, including takeoff/landing and putting on all that riding/flying gear!

nickpinkston 14y ago

This is very cool - though this type of vehicle should really be called a "roadable-plane". The real dream of the flying car is having the utility of a car (kids, groceries, etc.) with the ability to fly from point-to-point - not drive it on the road. The Jetsons had a flying car without wheels or roadability - that's the ideal. This means the city-friendly / VTOL aspect is waaaay more important than the "fast taxi" approach being taken. The Moller M400 (I know vaporware) seemed A LOT closer to this. Of course, the design of this vehicle makes more sense for today: land on a small runway on the outskirts of town, and then drive to your real location. This saves a ton of energy and seemingly works okay with existing infrastructure - assuming your city has a nearby airstrip.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
I would easily trade my motorcycle for this, though.
lotharbot 14y ago
The "real dream of the flying car" seems to differ from person to person. Some people essentially want a flying machine that they can land in their driveway and parking lots, that they can take to the air for all but the shortest trips, with little need for "car" abilities. Others want something that's a car the majority of the time, but can fly on those midrange (60-600 miles) city-to-city trips. VTOL on city streets is unlikely to be popular any time soon, largely due to safety concerns. But there's been a constant push for decades for something that can take off and land at small airstrips, and with only a few minutes' conversion work, can then drive over to grandma's house. Turning a 6 hour drive into a 3 hour flight would be a big deal.
- marvin 14y ago
  I'm convinced that what's eventually going to turn the tide for these kinds of vehicles is if we can make a tiltrotor ducted fan thing with adjustable fan geometry _and_ wings. Something like the V-22 Osprey, except with adjustable ducts around the fans. This way, you can get both the high thrust required for takeoff and the low drag required for cruise. Wings are a requirement if you want to keep the fuel consumption low. A vehicle like this wouldn't have comparable cruising speeds to airplanes (something like 80mph cruise), but could take off and land anywhere, and would have higher fuel efficiency than one of today's cars. There are actually canarded airplames today which cruise at 160 knots and use less fuel per mile than a car. I'm actually surprised there isn't more research into these kinds of vehicles, but I guess the Osprey fiasco has everyone running scared.

vibrunazo 14y ago

Self driving cars first. Flying cars second. In that order, cannot happen the other way around. I agree with Erick Schmidt when he said "It's a bug that cars were invented before computers, or else humans would have never driven cars themselves". Hopefully we won't implement the same bug again.

pawelwentpawel 14y ago
General safety was the first issue that came to my mind when seeing their website. If a thing like that goes viral we need to consider plenty of idiots on the roads making enough damage as it is already. Imagine giving them just additional angles from which they can crash into each other. However, considering the current speed of research I believe (and hope) that before something like that goes "very" public and popular it will be already automated.
wavephorm 14y ago
Self-flying air vehicles like this are probably easier to implement than cars. For simple reasons, such as there being no obstacles like roads, street lights, pedestrians, and because you have a 3rd dimension there is significantly more space so the vehicles can be more spread out. The trip itinerary is a lot easier because you're essentially going from point A to point B in a straight line. Also, starting from day one, you could mandate that no human is allowed to pilot these types of vehicles, so you wouldn't have a mix of human and computer pilots that you have with cars.
- ericingram 14y ago
  The answer to safety issues should not be a matter of restricting people from operating them. By that mentality, you'd ban a huge range of very useful things.
  - wavephorm 14y ago
    I disagree, restricting humans is exactly what needs to happen for personal air travel to ever to be safe. The humans are the rogues, they're ones that are going to cause problems, not follow standard procedures, drink and fly, check their cellphones while flying etc. Imagine how much uncertainty and risk could be eliminated if you know that 100% of the vehicles in the air are all computer controlled, and use a common communication/navigation protocol. It would simplify everything.

qntmfred 14y ago

As a kid In the early 90s I remember reading Scholastic Magazine at school and reading that flying cars would be available by 1995. I was ecstatic. :-|

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

I love gyrocopters and it was a slick website, so easy upvote from me. $300K is way too steep, though. For that price why not buy a new Cessna and just drive a clunker to the airport? And, for that matter, $300K is way too steep for a Cessna. The amount of money added to planes to cover lawsuits is insane. You end up buying an amount of gear that might sell retail for 30-50K for 10 times that much. I'd love to fly this, but hell, I don't see why I'd paid that much. Even if I were a gyrocopter fanatic, I'd just buy a kit and have it built. It's just way too much money for way too little capability.

bigiain 14y ago
"For that price why not buy a new Cessna and just drive a clunker to the airport?" Because when you get to the other end, you're stuck with the "$100 burger" at some out-of-the-way rural airstrip, instead of being able to drive into town and go to the nice pub. You'd have to be quite special for that to be worth $300k on a "toy" though…
savrajsingh 14y ago
time for an iconaircraft -- it's half the price and twice as cool.

ww520 14y ago

Nice. I like how they design it to fit in a regular garage. Wonder what's the range and what kind of fuel it uses. Regular unlead 87? A proximity warning radar to warn things nearby would be nice.

spatten 14y ago
From here: http://pal-v.com/the-pal-v-one/specifications/ http://pal-v.com/the-pal-v-one/specifications/ Flight specs: Range 350 - 500 km Max speed: 180 km/h Fuel economy: 36 l/h This is 20 l/100 km at max speed (11.76 MPG), so not amazing but not much worse than an SUV (my car, which is average, gets 10 l/100km). Plus you're flying in a straight line which is worth a lot.

rorrr 14y ago

I'd like to see a crash test of this "car". I'm not suicidal enough to drive it on a regular road. In fact, at the $300,000 price you might as well get a lightweight plane ($20K would get you a decent one), and a really nice car for $280,000. Since you can't legally take off and land on a road, there's no real difference.

eurleif 14y ago
Being able to fly somewhere and then drive on, without having to rent a car, is a real difference.
- nradov 14y ago
  Greater availability of car-sharing services like Zipcar at general aviation airports would eliminate much of the need for roadable airplanes.
  - eurleif 14y ago
    True, but the roadable airplane is still more convenient, especially if you have a lot of luggage. It's a luxury item, obviously, but there are people who don't want any hassle, and can afford not to have it.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- rorrr 14y ago
  Park your car at the airport. You will have to land there anyway.
  - eurleif 14y ago
    So own two cars, one at each airport? Or more than two, if you want to fly between more than two places?
bigiain 14y ago

hoprocker 14y ago

Watch out for fender benders!

Yxven 14y ago
Forget fender benders. Your house is now in danger of drunk drivers.
- damian2000 14y ago
  Or high flyers.

borski 14y ago

Seems a lot like the TerraFugia, albeit with very different style: http://www.terrafugia.com/ http://www.terrafugia.com/

dhughes 14y ago

I've always thought a flying car should be simple not this thing and not the screaming Moller four-engined. My idea was a van-like vehicle that was neutrally buoyant with bladders to control the buoyancy sort of a lifting-body dirigible with wheels Then I see SkyCat it's huge but pretty much the idea I had. I'm 0 for 2 this week for ideas, my subwoofer siren idea apparently has been made too.

spatten 14y ago

From the FAQ: For more densely populated countries, in the future there will be a network of small airstrips near recreational areas along the highway could lead to a much denser infrastructure. The ministry of Traffic in the Netherlands has started testing this concept in anticipation of the arrival of PAL-Vs in traffic. See movie (Link to movie ministry tests PAL-V ports). Wow, they really think that there will be enough people buying these to create a need for large numbers of airstrips? Crazy :).

Someone 14y ago
There is some spin in that FAQ. Government is, of course, involved; this thing needs permission to become road- and airworthy. The (meanwhile ex; the video must be from before October 2010) minister of transport also said it could be an option in some markets, and he said that, if these things become used widely, municipailites would have to decide on building such airstrips. He did not say the government was researching that possibility, though. So, all it was was a polite way to say "interesting; we will see whether it will fly (sorry, could not think of a way to make this pun-free. 'will take off' was the alternative I could think of)

10098 14y ago

I know it was dumb, but I was half expecting to see something like cars from the Fifth Element after clicking the link.

gvb 14y ago

Test flight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgHSaNtAMjs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgHSaNtAMjs Cool folding prop (but scary - if it doesn't unfold properly, it could make quite a mess). FWIIW, it is really a flying motorcycle, not a flying car. Three wheeled vehicles (in the USA) are licensed as motorcycles and have hugely lower regulatory (especially safety) requirements.

dexen 14y ago
> Cool folding prop (but scary - if it doesn't unfold properly, it could make quite a mess). Hard to tell from the video alone, but the rotor look just like my RC helicopter's: blades attached to the hub by one gudgeon pin each. If that's the case, centrifugal force alone is enough to align them perfectly †; no solenoid nor manual action needed ever. If that's the case, there's virtually no way those could fail, except for total disintegration. Pretty standard construction for small, two-bladed helis. Way cooler is that they can get away without flybar -- perhaps autogyros don't ever need one? † there's some forward-backward play of the blade as it changes attack angle and relative airspeed during rotation, but that's another matter.

bobobjorn 14y ago

I wouldnt call that a flying car, I would call that a car that can turn into a gyro/helicopter.

Sniffnoy 14y ago

Anyone have any idea how noisy it is?

ishkur101 14y ago

A brief history of flying cars. http://inventorspot.com/articles/experiments_flying_cars_6835 http://inventorspot.com/articles/experiments_flying_cars_683...