this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
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And thus the reason we don't have flying cars. That was two. Imagine the flaming hell that would be raining down if we had commute traffic numbers in the sky.
We don't have "flying cars" because "flying cars" is what we call aircraft whose use case isn't practical or safe.
You can go spend $100 grand on a light sport airplane and get a pilot's license in a couple months right now. You'll almost certainly never use it for actual practical travel.
I know a guy that's a pilot and while 90% of his flying is leisure, he'll sometimes fly down to France for his vacations etc in one. Doesn't own them though, has to pay rentals.
We don't have flying cars because technology has not progressed enough to make it economically viable for the masses.
We don't have flying cars because people are fucking dumb, and because the viable options are loud as hell.
We absolutely have the technology, and if there were a drive to make it affordable there would be more significant research into doing so.
To do a flying car, you need to simulate friction in the air, with significant enough force to prevent colision, while also maintaining low enough noise pollution to be acceptable to the average citizens. This second part is why we don't have Personal helicopters, despite aircraft being relatively affordable (in my cursory search I found two Helicopters less than 200K, one barely more than 100k, if there were significant drive to make them mainstream for the public they'd presumably be much cheaper, benefitting from economies of scale.)
Additionally, how do we as a society handle ATC for flying cars? Emergency stops? Impromptu repairs? Birds in the props‽
I'm not trying to naysay the retrofuturistic image we all want for the world. I am saying it probably shouldn't include flying cars. Especially if they're just Personal quadcopters.
This sounds like the person raving against personal computers in the 50's, how "no-one will ever need or want one."
And here I am sitting on the shitter with one that fits in my pocket.
Imagine trying to explain to someone just 40 years ago that I now have light bulbs which can sense motion in addition to being voice-controlled and full RGB. 80's interior designers would go bonkers for these.
I don't think these will replace normal traffic anytime soon but niche rescue vehicles or smth, perhaps. Also maybe we're just at the awkward point between quadcopters and Star Wars style jets? The jets are just so much more aesthetic.
We don’t need cars, nobody has even built highways or gas stations or traffic cops yet.