Submitted 1 day ago by Innerworld@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Buyers don’t need a pilot’s license to operate the aircraft, though they must complete training and take an FAA knowledge test.
That’s absolutely fucking insane. How did the FAA approve this? The only saving grace here is that the $200k price tag means few, if any, will be sold.
It’s an ultralight. You don’t need a pilots license to fly one in the US. You can even build one yourself if you want to. You don’t even need any inspection or airworthiness certificate. Since they can’t legally be flown over populated areas, it’s unlikely for anyone except the pilot to get injured or killed.
There are lots of fairly standard high end cars that go for more money than that. So the potential is quite high for these to sell well
A high end luxury car has a lot more utility than this thing. This is more like a $200k atv or snowmobile.
That’s horrifying to think about. Most people seem to barely be able to handle 2 dimensions while driving a car.
It also means the people operating them will have a high threshold for consequences and maybe not care so much about the community.
Because anything and everything about this administration is for sale.
Flying car
So an aircraft?
30 minutes range. Which, in practice, probably means ten.
In practice that is zero - you are not allowed to take off unless you have enough fuel to fly for an hour after landing. flying is safe in large part because of hard learned rules like this.
I’ve never seen a rule requiring any specific fuel reserve except for when filing IFR where you need enough fuel to get to your destination, and alternate, and still have 45 minutes of fuel.
I'm sure that doesn't apply to ultralights.
Looking at some of those photos, I guess ‘vertical’ is also applied, at least partially, to the vehicles orientation 😳
The only thing I consider to be a flying car is when the technology is completely different from what we have now.
Tired of these plane/copter/drone-type vehicles that they claim are also cars.
We need Star Wars/Fifth Element/Back to the Future II/Blade Runner-type vehicles.
These should be banned in cities immediately. The danger here seems insane.
As someone posted elsewhere, this is an ultralight aircraft and is therefore forbidden from flying over populated areas.
Oh that’s good news. However their stated business model is in cities so I expect heavy lobbying to lift that ban to start. It could be worthwhile to have layered bans at different levels of government to provide protection in case one layer gets paid off.
Their privacy policy is stupid. Here’s an archive link, so you can avoid la time.
People will die, rather quickly, and that will be the end of it.
I can’t wait until some influencer is half way from LA to Vegas when the low battery dummy light comes on.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 day ago
If it’s a flying CAR, how come it has to be towed to and from it’s designated take off and landing sites? The whole point of a flying car is that you can go from ground travel to air travel without much effort.
This isn’t a expensive flying car. It’s a cheap aircraft that an inexperienced and untrained pilot is going to be allowed to fly.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 1 day ago
There is no legal definition for a flying car, so they can use the term if they want. It’s like the term AI that gets thrown around a lot, but actually people mean an LLM, but technically even a checkers program is in the AI category.
The USA industry term is a “roadable aircraft” and legal is also moving to that term. In Europe the legal term is FlyDrive vehicle. And the thing in the article is an SC-VTOL (special condition) in Europe and powered-lift aircraft in USA.
just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I don’t think that’s the point of the comment.