Terrafugia Car-Plane Gets FAA Aproval, Hitting Skies and Roads 2011

Flying car? Well, the Terrafugia Transition is more like a plane that drives, but it’s damn cool looking and has cleared another hurdle on its way to becoming street and sky legal. The Federal Aviation Administration granted a special weight exemption to the Terrafugia Transition, allowing it to meet safety standards for road travel. The car-plane includes features like airbags, crumple zones, and a safety cage. What does a plane whose wings fold up so that you can drive on the highway cost you? Nearly $200,000. That’s a hefty bill, but according to the Associated Press, Terrafugia already has 70 orders with deposits. The Massachusetts based company is looking to deliver those planes, and more, by the end of 2011. Check out the Transition conquer land and sky in the video montage from Terrafugia below.

People have been dreaming about flying cars pretty much since the Model T first rolled off the assembly line. Aviation, however, is much more difficult that driving on the road, and equipping cars for take-off is probably a recipe for a new generation of fatal traffic accidents. The better solution seems to be to make light craft airplanes more mobile, allowing trained amateur pilots to travel to and from the airstrip in the same vehicle they fly in. We’ve already seen a plane with folding wings that can fit in your garage. The Terrafugia Transition takes the idea to the next level, folding its wings and transforming into a street-legal automobile. DARPA is looking at a similar tactic, trying to create a light weight airplane-car transformer that will spend most of its time on the ground rather than the air. It seems very likely that we’ll see these car-planes in the sky in the years ahead.