Stuck in a Holding Pattern

The flying car is a bit of a sore spot for many, since it was something that was promised to us from long ago.  And it seemed so believable.  No one really expected to see Warp Drive in their lifetime, but a flying car seems to just be rearranging inventions we already have.  Yet for a variety of reasons, it just didn't work out.  And now, between those expectations and our disappointment, there seems to be an overreaction every time some hint at auto-aviation arises.

Sometimes this comes from Mr. Paul Moller, an engineer focused on the challenge.  I first read about him in an article on new technologies coming in the 1990's.  It virtually guaranteed that he would deliver a practical flying car by the end of the decade.  Since then, I've seen similar articles about him and his technological quest every few years.  The articles are always portraying his production of a flying car as an inevitability that's right around the corner.  The oddest example of this naive optimism was in the middle of a job-hunting book in which the author went off on a tangent about how the government is wasting our money on public transit because Moller is going to answer all our transport problems in just a few years. 

I don't think Moller is trying to defraud people.  There's an old joke about asking an engineer how complete his current task is, and he says, "90%."  A week later he's asked how complete the job is, and he says, "95%."  A week later, 99%.  A week after that, 99.9%.  It's a common mistake to over-estimate how complete a new undertaking is (I've been guilty of this enough times.)  Moller is just an extreme example.  That or the car companies are sabotaging him.  Conspiracy theorists, start your engines.

But the latest flying car red herring is TerraFugia.  In this case, it's quite real and practical.  It's just that it's only technically a flying car.  Have you seen it?  It's really just a small plane that has wheels, and thus could conceivably be driven on the road.  I suppose that could be useful in a few cases; an amateur pilot would be able to store the plane at home and drive it to an airport.  But should a product useful to a few small-time pilots really get mainstream media attention?  No, we're only being told about it because it technically comes under that magic "flying car" label. 

It would be like if a jet-engine manufacturer created an engine small enough that a single person could carry it to the plane for installation using only a specially designed, back-mounted harness.  Conceivably useful, but limited in audience.  However, once they call it a "jet pack" it'll be on every news report on earth.