9P How Flying Cars Work

Nelson
How Flying Cars Will Work
Magazine Article by Kevin Bonsor
While sitting in a sea of cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic on
an endless expressway, have you ever daydreamed about
your car taking off and flying over the road? Imagine if you
could just flip a switch and unshackle yourself from the
pavement!
Traffic jams are a nuisance for all commuters. Many of us
spend an hour or so stuck in traffic every week. The growing
population is partly to blame for our congested roads, but the
main problem is that we are not expanding our transportation
systems fast enough to meet ever-increasing demands. One
solution is to create a new type of transportation that doesn’t
rely on roads, which could one day turn traffic jams into a
twentieth century relic. To do this, we must look to the sky.
In the last century, airplanes and mass-produced cars have
changed the way we live. Cars, which became affordable
for the general population mid-century, have allowed us to
move farther away from cities, and planes have cut travel
time to faraway destinations considerably. At the beginning
of this new century, we may see the realization of a longheld dream—the merging of cars and planes into “roadable”
aircraft, or flying cars. You’ve probably heard promises
about flying cars before, but now the technology to make
them safe and easy to fly may finally be here.
Around the world, engineers are taking on the challenge
to design a new breed of flying cars. While sleeker, more
advanced cars have been developed in the last decade, no
one has come close to opening up a flying car dealership.
Here are a few of the individuals and companies attempting
to deliver a flying car:
Canadian Paul Moller has spent 40 years and millions of
dollars developing his Skycar. He is now very close to
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developing the first ever mass-marketed flying car. In 1965,
he released the XM-2, which hovered off the ground but
didn’t go anywhere. In 1989, Moller International unveiled
the M200X, which has now flown 200 flights and can hover
as high as 15 m off the gound. Paul’s latest design, the
Skycar M400, is designed to take off and land vertically
in small spaces. It can reach speeds of 644 km/h and can
travel 1449 km on one tank of gas. Gasoline, diesel, alcohol,
kerosene, and propane can be used to fuel the Skycar. Its
fuel efficiency is comparable to that of a medium-sized car.
The initial cost of the Skycar will be about $1 million, but
once it is in mass production that price could come down to
as low as $60 000.
The Skycar M400 makes flying cars a reality.
MACRO Industries in the United States is developing a flying
car called the SkyRider X2R. This aero-car will be able to
take off and land vertically. The SkyRider incorporates the
interior design of a two-seat sports car with the mobility
of a helicopter or airplane. The company says it is also
developing five- and seven-seat models of the SkyRider,
which should fit in most two-car garages. The navigation
system will be controlled almost entirely by GPS satellites
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and cellular services. Drivers will simply get in, turn on the
power, and enter the address or phone number of their
destinations. The SkyRider will do the rest. MACRO says
that the system will be almost fully automatic, but may
allow some manual control. Commands will be entered by
simply telling the car what you want it to do.
In Israel, Dr. Rafi Yoeli of Urban Aeronautics is testing
the CityHawk, a prototype of a fly-by-wire (or computercontrolled) car. He’s also working on a project centered
around the X-Hawk, a rotorless Vertical Take-Off and
Landing vehicle (VTOL). The CityHawk is similar to the
Skycar and SkyRider in that it also takes off and lands
vertically, but there are some key differences. The CityHawk
will be powered by fans that are driven by four internal
combustion engines. Much like in the Skycar, the extra
engines in the CityHawk will allow the vehicle to land even if
one of the engines is lost. The CityHawk is about the size of
a Chevy Suburban, and will have cruising speeds of 145 to
161 km/h. CityHawk developers say that it could be used as
an air taxi, for news gathering, and for traffic control.
The future mass availability of flying cars could be very
exciting or very scary, depending on how you look at it.
If proper safeguards are put in place, they could be the
answer to our ever-worsening traffic jams. Flying cars that
can travel at hundreds of kilometres per hour would cut
most rush-hour commutes to a few minutes. They would
also allow us to live farther from work and still make it to
the office faster than we do in our road-bound cars of today.
Copyright © 2010 by Nelson Education Ltd.d.
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