The flying car making its way to the New York International Auto Show -- the Terrafugia Transition is a two-seat airplane with foldable wings, four wheels and turn signals.
Over the past few years the Massachusetts company has called its creation a “roadable aircraft” and lately, a “street legal airplane.” But ahead of the Transition’s first appearance at an auto show, it’s perhaps more appropriate to simply call it what it is: a flying car.
The company is coming to New York to gauge interest in a flying car from the non-pilot sector of the public, hoping the attraction of a flying car can create a few pilots and most importantly, customers.
Development of the Transition is progressing and last month Terrafugia completed the first flight of the production prototype. Dietrich expects flight testing to continue through 2012 and deliveries to begin next year.
The dream of a flying car has been around for a long, long time. And in recent years we’ve seen a dune-buggy-turned-car that flies like a powered parachute aimed at accessing remote parts of the developing world, and even aerospace guru Burt Rutan explored the concept in his final days at Scaled Composites.
Just today a Dutch company announced the successful first flights of the PAL-V, a single-seat three-wheeler that’s also a gyrocopter. But as is the case with many inventions that try to combine two already matured products, one plus one does not usually equal two.
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TXT 24
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