The flying car is not exactly a new concept. In the famous trilogy of science fiction films Back to the Future , the teenager Marty McFly travels to the future from 1985, his time, to 2015, where it is seen that cars can now fly. To this day, we realize that the future that the film showed and our reality are quite far apart, as roads continue to be built on land . However, although they have not yet become commercially popular, the truth is that there are already cars capable of taking to the skies for years. In fact, the idea of the flying car as a vehicle for domestic use capable of transporting people flying or levitating is not exactly new, but dates from the beginning of the last century, specifically 1904, when the French writer Jules Verne described a car-boat- plane, called Terror, in his work Owner of the World.
Later, and outside the scope of literature, Glenn Curtis presented the Autoplane Model 11 at the Pan American Aeronautics Exhibition held in New York. This model never managed to take flight, but it did set the stage for what would come next. In fact, as early as the 1920s, some eighty patents for different classes of flying cars had been filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The vast majority of these ideas did not end up being carried out, but there were some that did make it to the testing stage. Thus, in 1921, the Tampier Roadable was presented at the Paris Air Show, even going on a two-hour tour of the city.
Air accidents
In 1947, what is known as the first accident by a flying car took place: the ConvAirCar, a car with a fiberglass body, wings and an engine on top devised by American designer Henry Dreyfuss, crashed on its test flight, thus eliminating any possibility of producing it for sale to the public. This was the first accident, but unfortunately not the last. In 1953, Leland Bryan, designer of the Buick company, took off with his Autoplane, capable of reaching 105 km / h thanks to the rear engine it mounted. Bryan died years later by crashing into a later version of the model. Henry Smolinski, for his part, died in 1973 when a Ford Pinto that he himself put wings on crashed on its maiden flight.
Currently…
As we have already said, the use and operation of this type of vehicle is not yet widespread . However, flying cars are expected to reach the big cities in a few years and end up dominating the urban skies in two decades. In addition, not only the transport of people will enter this field, but also that of goods, with delivery companies and other companies joining the business. In fact, it is most likely that instead of the user being able to buy and pilot a flying car, the industry is moving towards the era of flying taxis as autonomous drones that will transport people from one place to another. With this idea of the future in mind, many are the manufacturers that have already joined the race to dominate the sky. However, there is still a long way to go, there are still years for us to see our cities as Marty McFly saw them in his particular 2015.
