The giants of aeronautics treat with precaution the idea of a flying car because such a project raises more questions than he answers, say the experts: it is a child's dream, a thousand-year-old toy.
But is this really next to the large thing in transport?
For the Living room of the air of Paris of this year, it was necessary to seek to find a plane which resembled a car: but such a model, AeroMobil, was hidden under the old Harmonies of the Museum of the Air and Space, just outside the capital.
This strange hybrid, with its bulbous nose and its retractable wings, conceived by a Slovak company, should enter into series production by 2020.
“After having landed in an airport, you transform the plane into the car and take the road where you want”, declared in AFP Simon Bendrey, the assistant engineer of AeroMobil.
And they already received a certain number of orders, he added, in spite of an asking price from 1.2 to 1.5 million euros (1.3 to 1.8 million dollars).
Whereas the flying cars played in films whose Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Fifth element, the race with the realization of these dreamed is carried out by tens of small start-UPS creative like AeroMobil.
Among the people closest to take off, there is the behavior Dutchwoman PAL-V, which offers a gyrocopter to two places and should be available the next year - a flight of 300,000 euros.
The Czech company Systems Nirvana affirms that it had tens of orders for its mini-helicopter, which can also travel on the roads, although on rather slow speeds of deceleration.
Silhouette Valley, company based Kitty Hawk says Flyer will be on sale from here the end of the year.
And last week, PEGASE of France, a crossing between an ultra light plane and a mini-car, crossed the English Channel, the narrow extent of water between England and France.
Until recently, the flying cars “were a crossing between a bad car and a bad plan" eclared Bruno Sainjon, person in charge of aeronautical laboratory French ONERA, in margin of the Living room of the air of Paris.
But there was a quantum jump of design thanks to vast improvements in the power of the electric propulsion, bound mainly to fast progress of technology drone recently.
Today, these engines raise 80 to 100 kilos, declared in AFP Xavier Dutertre, director of the Tech plane project based in Normandy, in the north of France.
“And we are not far from having the capacity to transport one or two men during approximately 20 minutes”, he added. “In five to ten years, that will become currency”.
Whereas the hybrids of control can be the last gadgets impossible to circumvent for the ultra-rich person, the experts estimate that these vehicles could be quickly exceeded, because industry concentrates on the solutions without wire further.
The true future declared Sainjon of ONERA is “an air transportation system with the request, which would be clearly the beginning of a new era for aviation” - a service of flying taxi, in other words.
The flying cars will not be something that no matter who can lead, “because it is risked too much”, declared in AFP Pascal Pincemin, a specialist in aerospace at Deloitte.
It planned digital platforms to manage the new form of traffic, and that seems to be what Uber, the breakdown service based on the application, took into account its project “Elevate”.
The idea seems to be to develop a network of electric planes with vertical takeoff and they aim at making their first demonstrations in 2020.
Dubai could be the first of the starting blocks with a new type of small autonomous electric helicopter which should enter service later this year.
There exists “a true appetite, a true interest”, in this kind of transport in certain more encumbered cities of traffic, declared Jean Brice Dumont, person in charge of engineering at Helicopters Airbus.
To the last auto show of Geneva, the company presented its own prototype of flying car “Pop Up”, developed in co-operation with a subsidiary of Volkswagen. But Dumont declared that they expected that technology ripe and to develop more.
Boeing, until now, did not show its hand and Pincemin from Deloitte does not see the flying taxis becoming common means of transport before 2050. Initially, said At it, the vehicles should prove their reliability.
Today, air transport has a mortality rate of 0.2 point per million flights, declared Patrick Cipriani, director of the security with the DGAC, direction of the French civil aviation.
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