In “fly mode” the Parajet Skycar will have:
A take-off speed of 60 kmph
A top speed of 110 kmph
Posted on 11/09/2008 8:45:08 AM PST by Stoat
The seed of this improbable adventure was sown four years ago when Gilo Cardozo, a paramotor manufacturer, had a eureka moment. For those not familiar with paramotors, picture a parachutist with a giant industrial fan strapped to his back, which provides forward motion and boosts lift for the parachute - or wing - during takeoff. Cardozo’s brainwave was to attach a car to the fan.
“I started making a paramotor on wheels that you sit on and take off and it suddenly occurred to me, ‘Why not just have a car that does everything?’” recalls Cardozo, whose Wiltshire-based company Parajet built the paramotor that adventurer Bear Grylls used to fly near Everest last year.
A workable flying car has been the inventors’ holy grail for half a century, but the reality has remained elusive. Just ask Paul Moller, the Canadian engineer whose four-seater Skycar is still at the prototype stage after 40 years and more than £100m of development.
Cardozo, a self-taught engineer with a tiny fraction of that budget, thinks he may finally have cracked it. “I’ve been dreaming about making flying cars since I was a boy,” he says, “thinking about all the ways it could be done and seeing how all the other people in the world have done it wrong.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
180 MPH on the road, WOW!
It's actually going to be a bit less than that....the indicated speeds are for Kilometers per hour, not miles per hour.
From the developer's site:
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Yahbut they were flying overhead and not using the highways. If I could have just followed them down the correct exit ramps it would have been easier.
Indeed he is! And for those who desire actual video footage to document the capabilities of the invention, here it is :-)
YouTube - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flying
((((snicker))))
this guy has been building and selling flying cars for several years.his aren't just a little atv with a fan and parachute
Those are KPH not MPH. 100KPH = about 60 MPH. 110KPH would = about 65MPH. You can do better on the open interstate.
Well, not exactly...
From the Times article:
A workable flying car has been the inventors’ holy grail for half a century, but the reality has remained elusive. Just ask Paul Moller, the Canadian engineer whose four-seater Skycar is still at the prototype stage after 40 years and more than £100m of development.
and from the Moller website:
Moller International is currently not taking deposits on aircraft.
That being said, I would prefer a functional fixed-wing skycar myself.
The tiny little bitty probem with that one he hasn’t been building and selling his cars for several years. Picture an amateur trying to build an Osprey tilt rotor helicopter.
When the first consumer-marketed flying cars start dropping like rocks when their engines fail, or whatever, these things will be dropped like hot pptatoes from being sold. When the present land cars engines fail, all you do is coast to the side of the road. You’re not going to be able to do that with a flying car.
Thanks. Now I’ve seen KPH and I’ve seen MPH before. All I saw was the mph.
No, if your drive in SoCal, there are times when you are lucky to drive 15 mph on the freeway. Then, there are other times and you can get run over doing 65.
See my reply No.29. Thanks.
There is a whole raft of people here in the UK who really need to be locked up :)
Seriously, eccentrics and individuals like this are the ultimate exression of freedom. We need them more than ever now.
Their mountains may be molehills, but they’re climbing them in style...
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