The (Promising) Future for Flying Cars

The flying car—it's been a tantalizing but elusive dream since the early days of aviation. Now a new wave of entre­preneurs, NASA and the Pentagon are trying to reinvent personal flight and put an aircraft in every garage. But the engineering challenges remain as formidable as ever.

By Sharon Weinberger
Sam Bousfield's  Switchblade flying motorcycle currently exists only in artists' renderings and as a buggy used for road tests. In recent trials, Bousfield says the road prototype broke 100 mph.


Nathaniel Welch

January 19, 2011 6:30 AM Text Size: A . A . A
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Even at its best, the Golden West Airshow in Olivehurst, Calif., is not one of the country's premier aviation events. The annual weekend-long celebration of light sport and experimental aircraft usually attracts only a few thousand spectators to Yuba County Airport. This year's turnout is especially light. High winds have kept some performers away and are preventing small-plane pilots from flying in to the venue, but the show must go on.

The pilots and prop-heads in attendance crane their necks to watch pairs of Aerobatic Racing Challenge biplanes corkscrew through a sequence of complex aerial maneuvers. Other visitors wander the booths seeking memorabilia, airplane sales pamphlets or overcooked hamburgers.

Away from the flight line, about 25 people are seated inside a hangar, only partly sheltered from the gusts blowing through the open door, to hear a speech titled "Move Over, Jetsons!" Sam Bousfield, founder and president of Samson Motorworks, picks up a handheld microphone and begins to tout his flying motorcycle, the Switchblade. "It's two vehicles in one, an airplane and a car," he says. "Go pick up groceries, drop off your grandma at the beauty salon, fly to San Francisco."

A 4-foot model of the aircraft sits on a folding table in front of Bousfield, its narrow nose inclined at a slight angle for maximum viewing impact. The race-car-sleek lines, tinted windows, curved rear aerofoil and bright red paint are designed to reel in investors and fire the imaginations of pilots.

Bousfield also uses the model as a prop to describe the craft: It's a two-seat, three-wheeled vehicle sheathed in a lightweight carbon-fiber shell. An owner would drive the Switchblade to anywhere a general aviation aircraft can take off, then swing out the wings and extend the telescoping tail to prepare for flight. When the Switchblade returned to the ground, the pilot would button down the flight-control surfaces inside clamshell doors underneath the chassis.

Samson Motorworks plans to sell the Switchblade as a $60,000 kit aircraft, meaning that owners must buy an engine and construct at least 51 percent of the finished product. The final price could reach $85,000, comparable to other kit aircraft. "Why would I spend my time and investors' money coming up with something as wild as this?" he asks the audience. "When I look at aviation, the only thing wrong with it is that it's not done enough."

But as the Q&A session after the speech makes clear, the audience members have not been fantasizing about the Jetsons, Blade Runner or The Fifth Element. They have more pragmatic considerations on their minds.

"Does it have legal clearance for California roads?"

"Is the wing retraction mechanism manual, hydraulic or what?"

"Is it possible to put in a four-­cylinder engine, like a Subaru's?"

Even though Bousfield fields each question with enthusiasm, no one puts down a $2000 deposit. If a rousing speech cannot convert pilots into customers, perhaps a demonstration of the hardware will do the trick.

But the flying-car prototype in Samson Motorworks' Booth A-27 bears little resemblance to the Ferrari-inspired model in the hangar. For one thing, it's missing certain design elements common to aircraft—like wings. The vehicle, a triangular lattice of bent steel tubes enclosing two seats and a rear-mounted engine, is more dune buggy than airplane. Bousfield and his employees stayed up until 2 am preparing this kluge of a skeleton for the first test of the Switchblade's drivetrain, suspension and steering.

Bousfield is not just the company's president, he is also its test driver. He climbs into the prototype.

"It's our inaugural flight," he announces to a dozen onlookers. "Well, not quite a flight."

He turns the ignition, the 1340-cc four-stroke four-cylinder engine roars, and the Switchblade scoots across the asphalt. When Bousfield reaches the end of a row of hangars, he slows and makes a sharp turn—the Switchblade's first. The metal cage handles the maneuver with ease. On the return leg, feeling more confident, he mashes the accelerator and the Switchblade speeds to 40 mph. Back at the booth, Bousfield is exhilarated that the prototype passed its first—and very public— test. But the onlookers just want to know about the turn radius, aileron control and takeoff and landing performance criteria.

In Yuba County, flying-car fantasies are a tough sell.

The air show demonstration may seem humble, but the Switchblade is far closer to reality than most flying-car concepts ever get. The history of roadable aircraft, as their proponents call them, is littered with frustrated ­ambitions. Glenn Curtiss's failed 1917 Autoplane, which was supposed to usher in an era of ubiquitous flying-car ownership, was the first of many disappointments. Over the decades, dozens of companies have drawn blueprints, built prototypes and solicited investor money, and ended up with almost nothing to show for their efforts.

Why have so many talented dreamers failed to make the flying car a reality? The answer: physics. Cars and airplanes operate in very different environments, so building a car that doubles as an airplane results in an inferior version of both. The challenges are so intractable that flying cars have become a cultural punch line, a metaphor for technological promises that never come true.

Despite all that, the dream is very much still alive. Over the past 10 years, scores of startup companies have proposed a new generation of dual- purpose vehicles. In 2010, the I-TEC Maverick, which is a dune-buggy-style vehicle with a pusher prop and parachute, was cleared for flight by the FAA and for the road by the state of Florida.

Other outfits have dodged fly–drive pitfalls by designing personal air vehicles that require neither roads nor runways. Martin Jetpack has lined up funding to build a factory that will produce a backpack mounted with shrouded propellers. In addition to these private sector players, the Pentagon is funding a flying Humvee program; NASA is designing a one-person electric helicopter/small-aircraft hybrid for commuters.

This renewed interest has been spurred by changes in aviation, including the widespread use of lightweight carbon-composite materials, the advent of smarter flight control computers and new FAA regulations that reduce training requirements for pilots of small aircraft.

It seems like a hopeful time for the flying car. "The appeal is obvious," says R. John Hansman, director of the MIT-based International Center for Air Transportation. "There's always a market—if you can do it well." But the odds—and the physics—are still stacked against the enthusiasts.

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