Roadable Aircraft Review

  

    At the very least, the flying car looks to us a lot closer to reality than our colony on Mars. 

    Designed to be a viable piece of transportation that's just as happy in the air as it is on the ground, the Transition comes loaded with all of the safety goodies of your standard economy car – airbags and crumple zones come standard. While Terrafugia hasn't exactly said what kind of top speed the Transition can carry on terra firma, it does say the craft gets around 30 mpg when scooting around town.

  
   Should the weather turn sunny and the skies grow clear, however, the Transition can lower its wings, fire up a rear-mounted propeller and take to the air where it can carry a top speed of around 115 mph with a range of 460 miles. Not too shabby. The little carplane only requires an air strip of around 1/3 of a mile, and with its wings folded, can comfortably fit in any garage. Final MSRP is expected to be around $194,000. 

   For a refundable $10,000 deposit you can, today, reserve your Transition for an anticipated 2010 delivery. At that point you’ll need $194,000 to buy one of these flying cars outright.

   You’ll also need a sport pilot license to operate a Transition. (Terrafugia will be offering Transition-specific courses that can qualify you for a license after 20 hours of flight time).This licensing requirement—along with regulations requiring Transition owners to take off from an airport and not from, say, an empty section of the Wal-Mart parking lot—has lead some to see the Transition less as a flying car and more as a glorified aircraft. Maybe so, but we think it’s a major step in that direction. Imagine some one who lives in Palo Alto, for example, but works across the Bay in Oakland. 

    This person could use the Transition to drive from a private residence to a nearby airport, take off, fly over all the car-clogging Bay Bridge, and land at an airport near the Oakland office. That’s an hour or more commute by car versus maybe 15 minutes with the Transition.

   Further, future versions of the Transition may include under-vehicle thrusters that would allow the car-plane to take off vertically. And maybe that will lead to the creation of “air highways” and, perhaps, take-off sections of Wal-Mart parking lots.

                                               Watch this video