Flying Cars

Amidst all the exciting news of self-driving cars, and electric cars, the Washington Post has a fun story about flying cars.

Apparently, Toyota just filed a new patent.

Physics, as always, seems to be the biggest problem.

Turns out, wings need a lot of space to spread.

Stacking wings makes them less efficient. Wings work because the pressure is higher below than above them, which creates lift. But the high pressure beneath the top wing on Toyota’s patent will interfere with the desired low pressure below the second highest wing.

“It’s incredibly inefficient,” said John Brown, a project manager at Carplane, a German company developing its own flying car. “And it may actually be too inefficient. You’d have to put it in a wind tunnel and see just how efficient it is.”

Sadly:

While automakers such as Toyota are exploring new mobility services, car analysts don’t expect flying cars to be on the market anytime soon.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on January 3, 2016.