Generally speaking the whole flying car thing doesn't interest me much and I seriously doubt we'll ever see them cruising the canyons between the skyscrapers  in various vertically organized traffic lanes like you see portrayed in a few sci-fi movies.  Just another Billionaire toy for the most part.  However, the design on this one is so cool I just had to share it.


The video here is a CGI promotional, they haven't actually built this thing in full scale yet.  The article says they have scale models built, but they don't show any vids of those which is suspicious.

The energy questions are obvious.  You have at least 4 healthy size electric motors and all the batts you have to lift off the ground along with the two passengers and the body of the vehicle.  Then there are those cool rotors with all the tilting wings on them.  That is a lot of surface area spining at high speed, lots of friction with the air.  Those winglets would get quite hot I think.  I at least need to see that design work on a scale model to lift the thing off the ground.

Anyhow, even if the rotor design does work, the energy demands of this vehicle are enormous.  How much flight time could you get with the best currently available Li batts?  30 minutes maybe?  For all of these flying cars which mostly are just scaled up drones the flight times are always under 1 hour.  Speeds usually under 80 mph so the range is very limited before it needs a charge up.

So, even if it works, best case it's just a toy for billionaires.  It sure looks cool though.

https://www.livescience.com/technology/electric-vehicles/meet-blackbird-a-flying-taxi-that-spins-and-moves-in-any-direction-thanks-to-new-propulsion-system

RE