Cars to spread wings within a year
UNITED STATES: Flying cars will be available in less than a year, according to a Silicon Valley startup racing to realise one of the most enduring dreams of science fiction.
Kitty Hawk, the developer, released footage this week of one of its engineers piloting an open-topped single-seater prototype above a Californian lake 100 miles north of San Francisco.
Cameron Robertson used a pair of joysticks to manoeuvre the vehicle 15ft above the water during a deafening fiveminute test flight.
He told the New York Times that the Kitty Hawk Flyer was hopefully ‘‘more of an exciting concept than what most people have had in their minds about fly- ing cars’’. It was not yet the finished product: the final version would be far quieter and look different, but ‘‘it demonstrates a vision of the future’’.
The company, backed by Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, has yet to put a price on the vehicles.
Owners would be able to fly their car under a special US category for ultralight aircraft that does not require a pilot’s licence so long as they stick to uncongested areas.
Beyond that, a complex regulation battle looms as campaigners seek guarantees that an influx of flying cars would not endanger public safety, increase noise pollution or infringe privacy, as flying drones have been accused of doing. New air traffic control systems would also be needed.
Kitty Hawk is one of more than a dozen ventures working on flying cars. Others are financed by Airbus, the aerospace business, Uber, the ridehailing company, and the government of Dubai.
For the time being, testing on another longstanding transport fantasy is more advanced. Google is letting members of the public ride its driverless vehicles on the streets of Phoenix, Arizona, without charge. The experiment with 500 selfdriving minivans by Waymo, the company’s sister firm, is the first large-scale public trial of a driverless car system.
— The Times