Honda's Hovering Concept Car Wounder if the technology is around to make up the car and its performance quoted?
Hahahaha. That would use sooooo much energy if it could ever actually get built (think 0.0001 mpg) - why do you need to hover in the first place? Just 'cos it looks cool doesn't count.
Ease congestion. Instead of having 6 lanes all full you can have 6*6 or 6*60 lanes depending on need. Get a bit of cold fusion power on the go it doesn't matter how inefficient it is to start with.
It's one think drawing a futuristic design, and completely other thinking for one second if it could be made, if the stuff required for it to hover could ever be stuffed in that space, etc... w/e, just keep on drawin'!
Stick to designing cars! Even if you could get an energy source, this would a stability nightmare without thrust actuators for low speed and control surfaces for high speed. It won't generate aerodynamic lift with that shape, and 'lift' fans would be useless in forward flight. => no flight. And using the fans as wheels? I don't know where to begin lolsing at that. Sure it's just a concept, but I don't see the point in getting anyone's hopes up. People moan about aircraft noise near airports - these would be just as loud as an equivalent sized jet engined aircraft. You simply can't move enough air with a fan without it being at high speed, and hence high noise. Flying cars on 'air moving' designs will never 'take off' for this reason. It would need anti-gravity technology, which is pure sci-fi, really. Meanwhile, back in the real world; what would be technically feasible in the next ~20 years is a civilian tilt-rotor. Planes as we known them are great for long range flights, but the hassle of getting to an out-of-town airport adds to journey times making trains just as convenient up to ~500 miles distances. A large tilt-rotor could fly from city centres to city centres with the speed of a aircraft and without the infastrucutre of a railway. The technology isn't that radical - or so Abe Karam beleives: http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/05/07/326090/radical-response.html
Yeah I knew that, by 'stick to designing cars' I meant the designer specifically. The Honda Jet is pretty cute, shame it's got GE engines.
for those saying that this will never be.... go back some 20 years and talk about PCs, mobile phones, digital cameras, hd tv, flat screen tvs, etc... technology has been evolving at an amazing speed, it wont surprise me if we see some of these on our roads in the next 20 years.
You've got a point there, but look at futuristic ideas from 60 years back and I bet there already are some hover cars... And cars haven't REALLY changed all that much in the last couple of decades, and for still much longer on some parts (they still use fossil fuel, they still crash, they still...).
We do already have flying cars too, that work in a way not too dissimilar to this one. The thing that would really make it cool is the GPS linking tech.
I remember reading an article aaages ago in the New Scientist about a fairly promising hovering technology. Can't find it for the life of me though. It was based around firing particles/waves into a vertical cone - as they collided with one end more than the other the whole thing had a slight reaction in the direction of the cones point.
eh, GE engines aren't bad. They make a good turbofan. Look at the GE 90s on a 777. Those things push some air
"sky cars" are old news, moller have been titting about with them for half a century. His current one gets 20 MPG. they're fugly though. It's just a drawing to get people talking, they cant do it. Cost to much to make, to inefficent, to dificult to manage runways&highways at the same time. It's stopped before it starts
take a current honda civic, those beautiful hatchbacks, and put it inside a time machine and send it to 1950, it will look like a bloody thing from space!