How Flying Cars Would Change a Skyline
Ru Chen
· 3 min read
Star Trek, Futurama, and countless other sci-fi franchises all have hovercars. In the future, city skylines will be filled with flying cars. That dream has existed for a century.
Now, flying cars are closer than ever. We have incredible aviation and
car technology
. How difficult would a blend be? But the thing is, the technology of flying cars already exists! We need infrastructure to support it.
Why we can’t have flying cars in the air yet
Flying cars themselves are already possible. And regulations are underway.
TechCrunch
released an article talking about how there are already early stage regulatory reviews of flying cars in America. The regulations, if passed, would allow for the marketing of eVTOLs—electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles. VTOL is really just a fancy way to say flying car.
We dream of air cars that can fly us from place to place faster and more easily than regular cars (and do it better than helicopters).
With urban flight, there would hopefully be fewer traffic jams. More freedom (and cool aerial cars). It would be easier to send aid to emergencies, too.
TechCrunch asserts that the main reason why we don’t have cars in the air is because of a lack of landing places. Current VTOLs in existence require a lot of space for takeoff and landing.
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What infrastructure and technology do cities need for aerial vehicles?
It would likely take decades of revamping city infrastructure for flying cars to be solidly a part of daily life. Safety of takeoff and landing would be crucial, but there are other key issues.
Vertiports (for landing air cars) would need to be commonplace in metropolises. If there’s only one landing space in New York City, for example, flying cars wouldn’t work out.
Because these stations would require substantial space, city planners, engineers, policymakers, and politicians would all need to keep flying cars in mind.
Noise would also be a problem. A bunch of VTOLs taking off frequently would probably be too loud for city dwellers to stand. Airports are usually situated far from city centers, but vertiports wouldn’t be very useful if they were in the middle of nowhere.
And what about alternative fuel sources? Aerial vehicles could become a great burden on the environment, in which case it would only be a downgrade from current non-gas vehicles.
Hydrogen has been proposed as an alternative, but more research and investment would be necessary by VTOL developers.
In the end, safety comes first. That will likely pave the path to acceptance and prioritization of VTOLS: by having them start out as emergency vehicles much like ambulances.
Ambulances get stuck in traffic and can’t exactly speed like a race car, even if there’s a life at stake. If flying cars can improve people’s life and health as an essential service, it will be more likely for cities to take on integrating flying cars.
Save on insurance
MORE: A Crazy Flying Mattress Led to a Weird Chain Reaction and a Confusing Insurance Claim
Both flying and grounded cars need insurance!
And it’s probably smart to focus on the ground now, since VTOLs won’t be a daily flyer anytime soon.
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