Flying Car Moves Closer to Reality
10 July 2011
This is the VOA Special English Technology Report.
You could fill the sky with all the ideas people have had for flying cars -- or what Carl Dietrich calls "flying-driving vehicles."
CARL DIETRICH: "Since the turn of the twentieth century, there have been many hundreds of published concepts for flying-driving vehicles. And some of them have actually been built and flown. But at this point the Transition is the closest to actually getting to the marketplace.”
Carl Dietrich heads a company in Massachusetts called Terrafugia.
CARL DIETRICH: "Terrafugia is developing the Transition street-legal airplane, which many people have characterized as the first practical flying car. And the Transition is designed to really be a general aviation airplane, like a Cessna or a Piper, a propeller-powered airplane that can fold up its wings, drive down the road and park in a single-car garage.”
He says the Transition Roadable Aircraft easily changes to a car.
CARL DIETRICH: "It takes about twenty seconds. It’s like putting the top down on a convertible, only instead of folding up your roof, we’re folding up our wings and we’re transferring power from a propeller to the wheels for driving on the ground.”
Development began in two thousand six, and the first road and fight tests took place in two thousand nine.
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