Terrafugia TF-X, the flying supercar

Well, it’s about time. Since the 1950s, we’ve been
promised flying cars were just around the corner. But
despite a steady stream of outlandish concepts, a
working car-o-plane has always remained frustratingly,
tantalizingly out of reach. Until now.
This is the Terrafugia TF-X, and it is surely the answer
to our airborne automotive prayers. Built by the Boston-
based outfit behind the still-not-yet-in-production
Transition, it’s a bold vision of a transportation future
unbounded by roads, runways or pleasing aesthetics.
As you’ll see from the video above, the TF-X – which
will seat four open-minded humans – is capable of
vertical take-off, thus negating the need for a runway.
Wings furled, it’ll squeeze into a standard single garage,
thus negating the need for a hanger in which to store
your personal plane.
It’s powered by a plug-in hybrid arrangement, a pair of
electric motors combining with a 300bhp petrol engine
to produce a megawatt of output. Aerial thrust is
provided by a ducted fan at the rear, and a propeller at
the end of each retractable wing.
We don’t know how fast the TF-X will go on road, but
once airborne it’ll soar at speeds of 200mph for a
distance of up to 500 miles. Which means you could hop
from London to Geneva in under three hours, and in a
single bound. It’s the future we were always promised.
We’re in.
However. There are, admittedly, a few tiny issues with
the TF-X. First, as you may have deduced from the
rather renderised images, it doesn’t actually exist yet.
Terrafugia admits bringing the flying car to production is
a process ‘expected to last 8-12 years’, which means,
realistically, it’ll be the middle of next decade before we
see one on the driveway of TG Towers.
It’s as yet unclear exactly how much the TF-X might
cost, but Terrafugia has hinted that the final price ‘could
be on-par with the very high-end luxury cars of today’.
But hey, does a Bugatti Veyron afford the opportunity to
evade traffic jams by leaping over them?
And then there’s the wider issue of safety and
legislation, both of which have played a significant role
in scuppering previous flying car attempts.
Terrafugia reckons the TF-X ‘should be statistically safer
than driving a modern automobile’, and says learning to
fly it will take just five hours of training.
That’s thanks, at least in part, to a high degree of
autonomy: once airborne, the TF-X will effectively fly
itself – though the driver can override the controls –
and land automatically, without human input.
In the event of failure, the TF-X can deploy its full-
vehicle parachute, allowing, hopefully, the flying car to
float safely down to terra firma.
Foolproof in theory, but convincing both the car-buying
public and the lawmakers that filling the sky with
personal planes is a safe, sensible thing to do will
remain a challenge for a while to come. Consider the
muddle legislators are getting into around self-driving
cars right now, then add the vertical dimension into the
mix, and it’s clear the world’s lawmakers will need every
one of those eight-to-twelve years of development to
figure out the car-o-plane small print.