Ridiculous-looking flying car approved by FAA

By at 7:49 am Friday, Jul 9

uglyflyingcar.jpg

Next year, those of you with a sport pilot license and $194,000 to burn will be able to buy an honest-to-Doc-Brown flying car. Sadly, the demo vehicle is not remotely as cool looking as a DeLorean. (Pesco says the production model is much slicker, and we'll feature an interview with the industrial designers behind the production vehicle in the coming weeks!)

As with many flying car prototypes I've seen over the years, the aesthetics of this demo version, called the Transition, suffers from Foldupwingitis, making it look like the illicit love child of an Aptera and an airport metal detector while in driving mode. That said, it gets a surprisingly reasonable 30 mpg on the highway (5 gallons per hour in flight). The intended customer seems to be private pilots who want to avoid airport waiting, shuttles and car rentals.

Take-off requires a mere 1/3 of a mile runway, which Popular Science says means you could use your street as an airstrip—but I suspect that may be illegal.

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Maggie Koerth-Baker

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