Flying cars have lost most of their cutting-edge coolness to drones and electric aircraft. Nothing reflected this more than the way Terrafugia, the MIT spinoff that worked on a flying car in Massachusetts and New Hampshire for years, saw it turned into a passenger-carrying drone prototype after the Chinese bought the company (as I noted in June).
However, New Hampshire still has a toehold in the long-held dream of flying cars – more accurately “roadable aircraft”, since they’re designed to take off and land at airports, then drive away – in the form of PAL-V. The Dutch firm makes a three-wheeled vehicle that flies like a gyroplane, a simplified version of a helicopter. N.H. state Rep. Keith Ammon is a booster and representative of the company.
The company says its getting really close to delivering actual machines to actual customers “as early as next year.” Make of that what you will.
Here’s my story from a flying car booster session for state legislators in Feb. 2020, when we were just starting to hear about this thing called COVID.
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