Open Menu
AllLocalCommunitiesAbout
lotide
AllLocalCommunitiesAbout
Login

China's latest flying car prototype showcases a breakthrough in urban air mobility, offering a glimpse into how low-altitude flight could soon integrate with everyday transport.

⁨93⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨IamNobuddy@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.utubepublisher.in/2025/04/flying-cars-in-china.html

source

Comments

Sort:hotnewtop
  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I still don’t understand how helicopters are not flying cars.

    If you want everyone to have a flying car, we should talk about everyone having a helicopter first so we can quickly come to the conclusion of why that’s a bad idea.

    source
    • spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      You are 100% correct that helicopters and their issues are the exact reason why flying cars are a terrible idea for the general population. I even like to point them out as the same thing when people talk about flying cars. There are some technical differences between people’s image of a flying car, which is closer to a drone with the multiple lift producing drives than a singular giant spinning blade, although the little ones would be comparably dangerous in a crash.

      That said, helicopters aren’t flying cars because you can’t drive them around on the ground.

      source
      • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        The problem with a flying car for the general population is that people are already bad at navigating in 2D and that any technical failure in the air means a vehicle drops onto something and the average person is not going to do a proper checklist and rigid maintenance schedule on their private vehicle.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
    • Litebit@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      hovercraft, too.

      source
  • Bezier@suppo.fi ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Urban air travel you say?

    Image

    Flying cars is an idiotic idea.

    source
    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      A lot of posts here lately are kind of silly ideas that China tries to sell as the next big thing because it‘s cyberpunk. We should be more cautious about these stories.

      source
      • fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        The PRC stans have really kicked up over the past couple of weeks.

        source
      • WanderingThoughts@europe.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Even in cyberpunk these flying cars are only for big corpos and the rich.

        source
    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Special licensing that is on-par with a helicopter license is needed immediately. They also need to establish travel corridors for commercial drones and flying cars. Delivery drones and flying cars without corridors just means debris fields.

      The alternative is autonomous AI trafficked flying cars that is networked with all commercial drone traffic, but that is 5-10 years away from being reliable and possible.

      Regardless, the big issue is safety, a helicopter can land without the engine running. A flying car can also land without power, but not as softly and with less survivability.

      source
      • spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        The alternative is autonomous AI trafficked flying cars that is networked with all commercial drone traffic, but that is 5-10 years away from being reliable and possible.

        50-100 years is more likely. The complexity of automated low altitude flight is exponentially more complex than driving on the ground.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
      • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        They also need to establish travel corridors for commercial drones and flying cars.

        Wasn’t there something EU <-> UK?

        source
  • hume_lemmy@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    People are so good at driving in two dimensions, I think we should add a third.

    source
  • CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Jesus F. Christ the BS that gets posted and upvoted in this community is getting more ridiculously Chinese propagandist by the day. Freaking air taxis? Really? Germany has like a dozen of those dumpster fire startups that chew up subsidies like it‘s no tomorrow (because for them there really isn‘t).

    source
  • phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    No, ain’t going to happen and stop trying to make it happen

    source
    • Gregorech@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Fetch…

      source
  • venusaur@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    As a drone hobbyist, this is absolutely terrifying

    source
  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’ve read the same promise 5 years ago.

    source
    • alsimoneau@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      And 20

      source
      • madcaesar@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        And 50

        source
        • -> View More Comments
  • caffinatedone@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    25 mins of flight on a charge, and that’s not going to be at max speed , so we’ll ballpark it to 15 miles of range perhaps and that’s assuming no “traffic” or delays on landing. Not terribly practical like pretty much all of these flying car concepts.

    Oh, and if anything goes wrong, you’re likely dead.

    source
  • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yes, what I need is ever more noise pollution.

    source
  • _druid@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’ve always been afraid of being killed by a drunk driver, or dying while at work. Now both of those things can happen at the same time.

    source
  • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    All I see is fully exposed propellers at groin/knee level.

    Forget about a birdstrike, you hit ANYTHING and you aren’t taking off or landing.

    source
  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    When the chances of dying in a car are just too low…

    source
  • cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    We have had flying car for decades now, its called a Helicopter

    source
  • muusemuuse@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s not that we can’t do this that has kept it from happening yet. It’s that it’s never been practical.

    source
    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yeah, this just looks like they upsized a drone without actually solving any of the practical issues with flying cars.

      source
  • softcat@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Maybe there’s a place for this with air ambulances or something, but in a crowded city I only see this integrating into buildings or the people below.

    source
    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The problem with an air ambulance idea is you need to make it big enough to work on a patient and it needs to be big enough to hold enough battery to have enough range. You could maybe have one big enough for working on the patient, but with a shorter range, with the only advantage over a helicopter being a smaller area needed to land.

      I think it will be a Segway of the air, meaning only “rich” douchbags and sightseeing companies use them in America until enough people die. Opulent presenting countries will use them for headlines like Dubai and SE Asian countries will have them for the police tactical units.

      source
    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      That’s what a helicopter is.

      source
  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I have gotten to the point that when a scifi world is made futuristic by having… traffic jams in the sky, and futuristic cities have to have magic sky cars in their skyline with ZERO thought towards futuristic mass transit I just shut it off.

    We already have flying cars that people use as their primary vehicle, it is called living in the middle nowhere Alaska and owning a bush plane. The thing is, that is actually the only kind of situation where everyone owning a flying car makes sense, extreme isolation, huge empty distances and no roads.

    The whole point of a city is NOT to need something like a flying car.

    source
  • latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Man, Rotten’ll have a renaissance if they plan on keeping the propellers that way…

    source
  • fubarx@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The ground level weedwhacker blades could do double-duty clearing out brush (and pesky pedestrians).

    source
  • alanjaow@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Even if the tech was perfect, they’d be far too loud. Drones are already pretty loud, but you wanna make em huge and everywhere? Ugh.

    source
  • Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    What kind of a backward ass piece of shit country would allow these things to fly all over the place? This entire industry is ridiculous and doomed to fail from the start.

    source