Two flying cars turn dreams to reality
Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 12:35PM 
BiPod from Scaled Composites: no plans yet for commercial production of the hybrid electric/gasoline car.airplane but first tests of prototype are promising
Competition in the flying cars market is heating up. Scaled Composites, a company owned by NorthrupGrumman and the supplier of spacecraft and launch vehicles to Virgin Galactic, has produced a hybrid flying car. Called the Model 367 BiPod, the two-seater can be driven like a car from the left seat or flown like a plane from the right.
As a car, the fiberglass and carbon fibre BiPod can get 1,300 km from a tank of gas and 56 km in electric mode. It has two 450cc internal combustion engines, 15 kW motors on both the driving wheels and the propellers, and lithium batteries that are recharged during flight.
There are no plans to produce the BiPod commercially, but that could change with the arrival of competition. Now there is the Transition Roadable Aircraft from Terrafugia, the first combined flying-driving vehicle to receive approval from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Terrafugia could begin delivering the Transition as soon as next year, when testing for crash safety is completed.
Proof of Concept: the Transition takes off in test flight, will start production in 2012
According to the company's web site, the Transition can take off or land at any airport with at least 2,500 feet of runway, and can be driven on any road and parked in any standard parking space on the ground. Rather than attempting to create a car that flies, the company took the opposite approach: they created an airplane with enhanced road capabilities.
Converting the vehicle from car mode to the airplane mode involves extending the wings and redirecting power from the wheels to the propeller through a carbon fibre drive shaft. On landing, the wings fold and stow vertically on the sides of the vehicle in less than thirty seconds, while at the same time power is redirected back to the wheels with a continuously variable transmission.
"Low-volume"production is set to begin on the Transition in 2012.
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