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Codebreaker

Flying car update, you guys!

Marketplace Staff Apr 3, 2012


Obviously, only one tech story ever really matters. You can have your iPads and smartphones and Pottermore and spectrums and robots but ultimately it’s about the flying cars. Everything else is just something to keep us distracted when we can’t talk about flying cars. Terrafugia is showing off its flying car model this week at an auto show in New York and says the Transition has completed its first successful test flight. The company still hopes to have it commercially available by the end of this year. That assurance is welcome to the 100 or so people who have already put down a $10,000 deposit on the vehicle. It’s really more of a boxy plane than a car since it can’t take off or land on a regular road, you need a runway. And also you need to be a licensed pilot. So wait, aren’t these just airplanes? Almost. The wings fold up so you can drive it around like a car and people can say, “Whoa! Is that a plane?”
Says the Washington Post:

The Transition can reach around 70 miles per hour on the road and 115 in the air, spokesman Steven Moscaritolo said. It flies using a 23-gallon tank of automotive fuel and burns 5 gallons per hour in the air. On the ground, it gets 35 miles per gallon.

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