Larry Page's Flying Car

Larry Page has invested some money and hired engineers for a flying car startup called Kitty Hawk. It's hard to call it a car. It's more of an air jet ski/ motorcycle. It's a recreational vehicle to be used in open areas.The controls and seating mimic a motorcycle or jet ski and it is designed to take off and land on water. According to Business Insider UK, the aircraft has eight rotors and two floats on the bottom. It takes off and lands vertically. It has a weight of approximately 100 kg, travels up to 25 mph, and can hover 10 m over the water.

Kitty Hawk does not require a license to be used. Apparently, it can be learned to fly in just a few hours. Kitty Hawk says that the final product will be a lot more practical than the prototype. I'm not sure what exactly they will do to make it more practical because it seems it isn't really meant to be so practical. Would I call this a flying car? No, not at all. However, a hovering vehicle, on which a driver can sit is a big step in that direction. Is it worth it to go in that direction? That direction being the revolution of flying car. I'm still deciding on that. Anyways, Kitty Hawk isn't really designed to be solely for the purpose of bringing us closer to flying cars. It's a recreational vehicle, used for fun. Similar to a jet ski. It's a very powerful drone. The whole concept of it all reminded me of hover-boards. The name implied something much cooler than what it actually was, but nevertheless, it was still pretty cool. Kitty Hawk has a price of about $2000 which seems very reasonable for something like this. It actually seems very inexpensive. But, the quality of this product is yet to be judged.

Moving on to the topic of flying cars in general. That's a very interesting topic because the idea is intriguing and sounds futuristic. But, is it practical? A flying car will reduce the space for roads. However, unless public transport also switches to air (which would not be very productive) roads will still be there. Also, there's another question. Will the air have controlled traffic or will it be open for everyone? If it is open it could be nerve wrecking to drive. Sure, there are no pedestrians and buses or anything like that, but there are cars flying around you at every angle. Cars could fly at different elevations. A fix to this would be autonomous flying cars. Which could be a possibility. However, many people can not trust an autonomous car on the ground. There's no way they would accept one in the air. However, it would actually be somewhat safer, or at least as safe. Instead of pedestrians and buses, there are only other cars flying at different elevations.

If traffic is controlled and there are no autonomous functions, then there could essentially be lanes on top of each other. It would be difficult to make an upwards or downwards lane change. An idea that would be more practical would be having freeways for flying cars, but not for other roads. Flying cars should be able to function as regular cars as well. There can be designated landing zones/lanes for flying cars after freeway exits. You wouldn't have to land directly on your driveway. Flying cars would certainly fix traffic issues on the freeway, but wouldn't be very beneficial for everything else. So you have to ask, is it worth it to remove all freeways for this? It all depends on how much traffic increases in the future. It's likely that it will be pretty drastic. And for that, it's not possible to keep making freeways wider, especially in urban areas.

In the end, flying cars a vision for the very distant future. They are unnecessary now but will probably be required in the future. And the Kitty Hawk is an indirect step in that direction.