Flying Cars the way of the Future?
What if you could travel "as the crow flies" with no more of a carbon footprint than taking your SUV? This is the claim made by Moller and their new M400 Skycar.This ethanol fueled vehicle takes off and lands vertically requiring only 35 feet in diameter of landing space. It carries four passengers up to 36,000 feet at 360 miles per hour. A single tank could carry you as far as 750 miles -- that's New York, NY to Louisville KY.
Now granted, you can't actually purchase a Skycar yet for under 3.5 million but Moller is happy to take a deposit! Check out some of the other flying cars in the works.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-05-2008 @ 11:55AM
Karsten said...
A Boeing 747 can easily carry over 300 passengers from LA to New York with one single tank! Seems more efficient to me. Or should someone ask what the size of the tank is? What is the fuel consumption per passenger?
Karsten
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12-05-2008 @ 12:02PM
kelly.leahy said...
Hey Karsten, I did a quick search and a 747 flying 500 passenger gets about 100 miles per gallon per person ... or .01 gallons per mile. However, that's for long flights. The flying car would be put into daily use ... supposedly. The Moller can carry four passengers which puts their fuel consumption per passenger at .0125 gallons per mile; only .0025 more than the 747 is my math is right.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question192.htm
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12-05-2008 @ 5:26PM
mavkato said...
people seem to have enough trouble driving in two axes, on paved roads. i can't imagine people driving in three axes driving on virtual roads in the sky.
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12-09-2008 @ 3:38PM
Karsten said...
I did some looking up myself. And I still question the ability of this skycar to get a reasonable fuel mileage. Now, I am not a pilot, so please be patient. May conclusions may not be right.
A Cessna 150 (a older, small, single engine airplane) gets between 15-22 miles per gallon. A Cessna 172 uses 8 gallons of gas per hour. There is more data for those aircraft that is similar. I do not know how many people they can carry. The Cessna 150 may come equipped with a 100 horse power engine. These are SMALL aircraft that take of at a slow speed and cruise at a slow speed. The skycar is supposed to go 350 miles per hour. It is going to take off and land vertically, which means MUCH more fuel consumption than with the help of the lift of the wings. The skycar has four engines (as pictured), however maybe not all for forward motion.
In any case, if a small aircraft like the Cessna 150 gets only 15-22 mpg (or 0.066 to 0.045 gallons per mile per airplane) I cannot imagine how the pictured Skycar can be more efficient. On the Moller site they claim 20 miles per gallon. I want this measured with actual test flights. All I get to see on the site are hover tests.
Just because it says "ethanol" and because it takes off vertically does not make it more efficient or reasonable for day-to-day use. The Space Shuttle takes off vertically too and it burns (in parts) hydrogen to do that. Not a "clean" vehicle I dare say.
Karsten
http://www.polluteless.com
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