I think we can all agree that every single thing the human race has ever done has been just a huge disappointment. Especially the future. We were promised a lot of things by inventors, movies and crazy people, and what do we have to show for it besides the iPod? Squat. Teleporters? No. Laser guns? No. Rocket packs? Please. Faster-than-light space travel? Aliens? Robot servants who become sentient and rise up in violent revolt? Nope. No. Nada.
But all is forgiven. Why?
FLYING CARS.
Yes, I know they weren't sunglasses. Calm down.
Yes, two (two!) companies have unveiled their prototypes for flying cars this week, and suddenly the future’s looking so bright, I got to wear cool, futuristic shades. Like whatisface. The Reading Rainbow guy from Star Trek: The Next Generation. You know who I mean. After all these years of drudgery, the future is finally, finally, happening!
The first, The Transition, from a company called Terrefugia, will be on display at the New York International Auto Show on Friday. Also on display will be the new model of New York taxis (which I’m not sure I could get excited about even if I lived in New York and owned stock in Checker Cab) and a car that drives itself. Which has to suck for those guys.
Auto Guy: Behold! The car that drives itself! Imagine yourself, free to take care of–
Spectator: Does it fly?
Auto Guy: Huh? Well… no.
Spectator: Pass.
But back to the FLYING CARS.
Sure, a Blade Runner future also includes dystopian horror and constant darkness, but... you take the bad with the good.
Now, they’re prototypes, so they’re… you know… they’re not Blade Runner. They’re not Back To The Future Part II or The 5th Element. They’re not handsome vehicles. But here’s the thing: it’s 2012 and the first one’s rolling out. Blade Runner was set in 2019. Which means we’ll have the Blade Runner cars in just 7 years! And Back To The Future II was in 2015! Yippee!
Here’s the first vehicle, The Transition (which sounds like a character on the off-brand version of Jersey Shore). The music tries to make it fast paced, even when the guy’s just getting gas at a mini-mart, and it’s a little disappointing that he takes off from an airport as opposed to, say, being in a traffic jam, pulling into the emergency lane, yelling, “Sayonara, Losers! HAHAHAHAHAHA!” and taking off… but still…
The competitor is from a Dutch company, and it’s called the PAL-V (Personal Air/Land Vehicle). Of the two, The Transition is clearly the “family man’s” flying car. The PAL-V is the sexy one that you’d use to meet and terrify girls, and looks like you’d definitely die in. But in a James Bond way, and with a propeller that’s super cool.
Both vehicles are already pre-selling for about $300,000, which is a lot of money, except that, of course, you’d then have a FLYING CAR. And now that flying cars are becoming a reality, logically, all the promises that were made about the future are about to come true. As such, I would like to pre-order the following:
- 1 Transition
- 1 PAL-V
- 1 Millennium Falcon (with Wookie)
- 5 laser pistols
- Enrollment in the “Light Saber of the Month” club
- A clone, who doesn’t realize he’s a clone, discovers the truth and has a terrifying existential crisis, then comes to accept it and we bond
- 1 Blade Runner police car with personalized license plate reading, “Sayonara, Losers!”
The Byronic Man 
April 5, 2012 at 3:12 am
wow ..really
April 5, 2012 at 6:21 am
True story.
April 5, 2012 at 4:35 am
Awesome! I would prefer the PAL-V while I’m still a bachelor, then go with the Transition after I get married (provided that I find a woman who doesn’t think that I’m totally nuts to drive / fly either one).
Now, if the powers that be could deliver on the 4-hour work day and 4-day work week that they promised us back in the 1970’s, the future might be more worthwhile…
April 5, 2012 at 6:22 am
The powers opted instead for the futuristic “10-hour work day without overtime and reduced benefits” model.
April 5, 2012 at 4:39 am
BTW–The guy with the cool specs from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” is Levar Burton, who played “Kunta Kinte” in “Roots.”
April 5, 2012 at 4:52 am
I’d like a Serenity, please. Any Firefly model will do, actually.
April 5, 2012 at 6:15 am
YES!!! May I be Jayne’s bunk mate?
April 5, 2012 at 6:30 am
Done.
April 5, 2012 at 7:19 pm
I’ll take one too! I’ll take Wash as my chauffeur any day!
April 5, 2012 at 6:25 am
Oh, yeah, I need one of those, too! Especially if Kaylee comes with it as a mechanic and romantic interest.
April 7, 2012 at 12:42 pm
I am in love with this thread.
April 5, 2012 at 5:23 am
Reading Rainbow… Funny. And yes, I remember Reading Rainbow.
As clumsy as the flying cars look, it is neat to see such a thing come to fruition.
April 5, 2012 at 6:27 am
The thing that cracked me up was how disappointed I actually was when they took off from an airport, even though of course they have to launch from an airport… for now…
April 5, 2012 at 6:07 am
Geordie LaForge! That thing makes a great hair clip too!
April 5, 2012 at 6:31 am
See? That’s the breadth the optimism in Star Trek’s vision of the future. Glasses that can make the blind see, and hold your hair in place.
April 5, 2012 at 6:39 am
Live long and prosper, Gallactic banana hammock..I mean…clip. I’m still holding out for a holodeck and time travel by slingshotting around the sun.
April 5, 2012 at 6:40 am
I want to get me one of them flying cars!!!!! It’s about dang time~ I suppose I will need to get a pilot’s license..
Great post!
April 5, 2012 at 7:23 am
I think you just tell the cop who pulls you over, “No I don’t have a license, but would you like a ride in my flying car?” And the ticket will just go away on its own.
April 5, 2012 at 7:26 am
I bet that would work!
April 5, 2012 at 6:52 am
Dang. I wish I was in that Transition commercial so I could say, at minute 1:48, when I drive right through the stop sign, “I totally paused.”
This post is incredible for so many reasons. I could not stop laughing when you said, “…and looks like you’d definitely die in.”
April 5, 2012 at 7:27 am
I couldn’t believe how long it took to get to the flying. “Look! He’s changing lanes!”
April 5, 2012 at 7:00 am
God, I can’t even imagine the air-traffic jams once these are in driveways (flyways?) across the world. At that point, I might decide to be cool and retro and keep my old wheeled variety.
(btw, the Blade Runner cars? Spinners. You’re welcome.)
April 5, 2012 at 7:28 am
I know, but I figured if I wrote “spinners” I’d have to explain it anyway, and I liked the sound of “Blade Runner car.”
April 5, 2012 at 7:08 am
It’s bad enough dealing with the DMV and traffic violations….. would this mean we’d have to deal with the FAA as well ? Hm. Roller skates are lookin’ better & better !
April 5, 2012 at 7:28 am
“Flying” roller-skates…?
April 5, 2012 at 7:52 am
I was thinking old fashioned, “car-hop burger stand” white boot skates. Perhaps too many episodes of Mad men….
April 5, 2012 at 7:36 am
Great. Just what I need. And I thought coming to those pesky 4-way stops were nerve-wracking enough.
April 5, 2012 at 8:11 am
Any news on those hover-board things? Or hologram chess?
April 5, 2012 at 9:36 am
No progress on hover-boards. Hologram Chess is holding steady on the “let the Wookie win” front.
April 5, 2012 at 8:26 am
No, no, no, you definitely have to be wearing these!
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/google-begins-testing-its-augmented-reality-glasses/
April 5, 2012 at 9:34 am
I was just reading about those!
April 5, 2012 at 8:27 am
AND for the great low price of just $200,000 you could even get a ticket for Virgin Galactic and spend some time at zero gravity – I think this launches (no pun intended) next year? http://www.virgingalactic.com/ I’m calling my travel agent…
April 5, 2012 at 9:31 am
Oh, I’ve already got my ticket on Virgin Galactic, don’t you worry about that. I post-dated my check to 2092.
April 5, 2012 at 9:32 am
See you at the space station then! And good call, I may have to do the same. Surely my great, great, grandkids will be millionaires and willing to foot the bill!
April 5, 2012 at 8:57 am
What? No Orion-class starship?
April 5, 2012 at 9:30 am
I’m a man of modest goals.
April 5, 2012 at 9:55 am
This is exactly what I was going to do with my lottery winnings. Damn.
April 5, 2012 at 8:12 pm
Just keep playing – everyone wins eventually!
April 5, 2012 at 10:47 am
I can tell you’re much younger than I because you say the Reading Rainbow guy…TNG. I’d say, “Kunta Kinte who ended up being Geordie” (old lady points AND geek points).
April 5, 2012 at 8:13 pm
I’ve actually never seen Reading Rainbow, but I know he’s the guy. I’d forgotten about “Roots.” I’m kind of in-between the two.
April 5, 2012 at 11:59 am
I need a flying car like I need a new@ss. The roads have enough nutjobs and asshats as it is and we truly don’t need them crashing into one another and falling out of the sky. At first we might view the herd-thinning as a good thing but if you crash your silver 2006 PT Cruised into some winged flotsam that has crashed in the left, right and center lanes of I-95 the bloom is off the rose.
April 5, 2012 at 8:14 pm
That’s the part the movies never cover – the sixteen-year-old in the flying car, and the drunk, and the tailgater.
April 5, 2012 at 8:57 pm
This may be the funniest comment to any post I’ve read in eons. Way to tell it like it is.
April 6, 2012 at 10:55 am
Thanks I try.
April 5, 2012 at 12:38 pm
I’m holding out for a production model of Speed Racer’s powerful Mach V complete with buzz saws, deflectors, underwater capabilities and homing robots. That’s the future, my friend.
April 5, 2012 at 8:15 pm
Probably around 2021, I figure. At the latest.
April 5, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Yeah, um… no. Those aren’t flying cars. Those are a small, very strange looking plane and a helicopter Transformer. I know, I know, prototype. But until it looks like George Jetson’s jet-propelled, non-gasoline operating (seriously?! They couldn’t invent a fuel? Are they paying attention to the problem of gas consumption and prices right now?!) WonderBubble and it CAN take off from the highway without asking Clarence for clearance, I’m taking a pass.
April 5, 2012 at 8:16 pm
DON’T KILL MY DREAM! They’re flying cars!! LALALALALALA!
April 5, 2012 at 3:03 pm
I would love a flying car. That would be handy. I think we all know the roads can’t handle any more traffic.
April 5, 2012 at 8:16 pm
And there’s all those bored air-traffic controllers, just looking for something complicated and stressful to do!
April 5, 2012 at 7:23 pm
What about the cool space ship thing in Flight of the Navigator? Voice control over actual flying is way better.
April 5, 2012 at 8:17 pm
Oh, now that we have these, I think all of these things are just a couple years away. Including The Great Glass Elevator.
April 5, 2012 at 7:42 pm
You lost me at the whole Reading Rainbow comment – it was a never ending loop of the Reading Rainbow song going through my head as I tried to focus on the uncool looking flying cars. How the heck can they make something as cool as flying cars look so uncool?
Butterfly in the sky
I can go twice as high
Take a look
It’s in a book
A Reading Rainbow…
I curse you!
April 5, 2012 at 8:19 pm
It’s the “getting gas at the mini-mart” that kills me. Nope, it’s not the flying part I want to see, I want to know about filling that baby up! Ooooh, premium! I wonder if they have Turkey Jerky in that mini-mart?!
April 7, 2012 at 12:43 pm
I’m still waiting on cold fusion.
April 8, 2012 at 8:29 pm
For a must-see-TV moment on Jersey Shore, I’d like to see The Situation drive/fly (“dry?” “flive?”) The Transition.