The flying car has been a dream pursued by inventors since the dawn of aviation. Engineers and eccentrics have patented more than 70 designs since 1918, but success has been elusive — until now. An aeronautical start-up called Terrafugia — launched by a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate who won the school’s prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize last year — has developed a small airplane called the Transition that it says can take to the sky as easily as the road. It is about the size of a large SUV and features innovative folding wings that collapse with the press of a button. Terrafugia calls it a “personal air vehicle.” The company still must design a drivetrain to propel the craft and a mechanism to transfer power from the propeller to the wheels, but it expects to begin flight tests late next year. Production could begin as early as 2009, and Terrafugia says it’s already received more than 30 orders.

Most attempts at building a “roadable” aircraft have had the same problem — it has proved exceedingly difficult to design a machine light enough to fly but robust enough to drive without being blown off the road. Advancements in composite materials and metal alloys have addressed many of those problems, and Terrafugia is in a race with several other companies to bring a flying car to market. They include Moller International, Aerocar and Urban Aeronautics. The Transition isn’t so much a car you can fly but an airplane you can drive, and it is meant to be an alternative to driving for trips between 100 and 500 miles. “This is not going to replace your Toyota Camry,” company founder Carl Dietrich recently told the Boston Globe. Preliminary specifications call for an aircraft 19 feet long and 80 inches wide with the wings folded (the wingspan is 27 feet). It will have a 100-horsepower engine powered by unleaded fuel and a propeller at the rear. The airplane will cruise at 115 mph and have a range of about 460 miles, and it will have room for two people and 550 pounds of cargo. The self-folding wings make the Transition unique, as past flying cars used wings that had to be removed or folded manually. Though the drivetrain is the remaining technical challenge, the greatest challenge may be getting the vehicle certified by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration. The aircraft will be classified as a light sport aircraft, and a sport pilot license will be required to fly it. The company has been working closely with the two agencies, and they report making progress toward certification. Dietrich believes the time is right for a flying car, noting there are 5,296 public airports in the U.S. — many of them underutilized — and most people are within 20 miles of one. Go to: http://pamablog.typepad.com/pama…

Write a comment