AirCar - a practical aerial sport car?
 

I see this has made the news. I’m sure some compromises had to be made, but if it functions reasonably well both as an aircraft and as a road vehicle, it looks promising. It has a lot of the low aerodynamic drag features incorporated that you see on high mpg cars.

https://www.motor1.com/news/517628/a...-first-flight/

It was the topic of this thread;

https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...ity-39534.html

It would be more reasonable to start out with a plane design and adapt it to work as a car.

It would be more logical to start with adversarial generative AI and let it find the middle ground. Favoring the airplane side of the equation obtained the Taylor Aerocar.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...d_as_N101D.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerocar

With that ground clearance* it would corner like an Aptera. :)

Best effort so far, IMHO, would be Fuller's Dymaxion. Which never flew. Personally, I'd settle for a car/boat hybrid amphibian.

*Stanced Aerocar anyone?

Would be interesting to do the adverse AI design because the two requirements are at opposite ends of the design spectrum.

I believe you are aware of the limitations Molt had at the time with the parts involved? Todays manufacturing materials would allow much better structure. Maybe even formed polymetal.

Metal fatigue in the tail from being too close to the propeller? There was something about the bearings for the prop-shaft but I can't find a reference.

He also designed the Coot amphibian and Mini-Imp homebuilts.

I think one thing everyone is ignoring is the human element.

Think about the sheer number of truly terrible drivers you see on the road every day. Then think of them all with an extra dimension to keep track of, and all of the energy (speed and altitude) that they will have when they collide with anything.

I just barely trust pilots who don't have instrument ratings. There's no way I would trust the majority of drivers in that situation.

-soD

'Flocking' software running on a distributed network of autonomous drones. It's the only way to be sure. Avoid single points of failure.

Personally, I thing a water amphibian should come before an aerial vehicle.

The only scary stuff should be when you are near the edges of the sky where your options become limited. I don't know how many rated pilots you fly with, but low time barely current IFR pilots are the ones that make the news for "attempting to continue flight into the ground".

There are transponders that alert you to EVERYTHING nearby from toy drones to jumbos @36000 asl above you.

I think that you will be a fairly limited operator in the sky.