Terrafugia is building this prototype for a flying car. Will it ever make it to mass market production? Well, I doubt it: private airplanes are relatively inexpensive, and everyone who has a private airplane already has a car. Those people who want to fly will generally go for an airplane, as the performance will be much better than a flying car, and very few will accept a hybrid car/airplane if it means that the performance in either mode is lower than the performance of a regular airplane or a regular car. However, there may be a niche market for people with eclectic tastes.
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My guess is that they will only need to sell a few to those rich and shameless who can afford to have a conversation piece. The profit made will prove that a fool will buy anything just to prove he can.
Not so fast. Consider a flying machine that is also an all-terrain vehicle. An off-road car. A boat. A snow, ice, and mud rover. Perhaps a submarine too? Eventually a space ship?
This is an evolutionary process. People hate limits.
Don't think LA or NYC. Think Patagonia or the outback. Think Alaska where roads are scarce but where you might want to mix your travel modes with a single vehicle.
Dude, you need to think beyond your experience.
Well, my experience isn't DC or LA - I grew up on a ranch a mile from the nearest neighbor. ;)
Yes, there might be a niche market for this type of vehicle, as I said in the post. However, that is probably all it will ever be, a niche.
Consider that there are already hybrid vehicles out there: amphibious cars have been around since the 1960s, and there are float planes and sea planes. Do you see many amphibious cars around? They are largely novelty items. The market for float planes is much larger, and are suited to places like Alaska or the Canadian far north, where there are a lot of lakes but very few roads - and if there are very few roads, then there isn't much point in having a flying *car*, is there?
From the look of the design of this flying car, one would need to have a runway for takeoffs and landings (as opposed to the VTOL of the Moller skycar). If you're going to have to have a runway anyhow, then you might as well have a vehicle that is optimized to travel from airport to airport, and another vehicle that is optimized to travel on the roadway. The more I think about it, the smaller the market for this particular design becomes.
While I mostly agree that this thing will just fill a niche market for novelty vehicles, as a pilot, I can see some practicality in it.
If you are flying and encounter bad weather, you can land at the nearest airport and continue your trip on the highway, as opposed to having to land and wait it out, or turn around. If you arrive at your destination but the weather turns bad before the return trip, you can drive home, as opposed to being stuck there.
A friend of mine (also a pilot) once got stuck 500 miles from home for 3 days, due to persistent bad weather. He could have taken a rental car or bus home, but didn't want to leave his airplane there. With a flying car, he could have just driven home.
Its worth mentioning that most private pilots do not have insturment ratings, meaning they are not certified for flight in poor visibility where flight by instruments only would be necessary. Such pilots face fairly tight restrictions on weather and visibility in order to fly. Many would love to have a flying car, if only to eliminate the risk of getting stranded at their destination for days by the weather.
Not to mention the fact that it can be stored in your home garage, saving you airport hangar rental fees ($250+ per month) and the fact that you don't have to take a taxi or rental car to you final destination from your destination airport.
Nonetheless, there are performance compromises, and I still don't see it selling all that well, but I thought Id lend a private pilot's perspective. I know several pilots who would probably be interested in something similiar to terrafugia's transition, even with the performance compromises.
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