Flying Cars

Everyone wants one, but as soon as they turn up with any level of affordability, someone will crash one and then some existing industry (air? road?) will fund some “won’t someone think of the children” lobby-group to get a law passed making them illegal, so only rich people or people in Brazil will be able to use them, and only mega-corporations will be able to make them.

This happens every time.

The killer-app, the intel-inside of the 21st century is shaping up to be the ability to ignore stupid laws designed to protect legacy industries… for our “safety”.

Whatever.

Why do I like this? You already know why I like this… I like this because it looks like an Aptera, and Aptera’s rock.

Apeteras are the future of transport methinks – but they need to be open-sourced, and made out of bamboo. If I had a million dollars I’d spend it all on doing just this. I know people who could make such a creature. You could use your iPad or iPhone or whatever with all it’s built-in geo / tilt-sensing smarts as the dashboard… bingo. The controls themselves should be mechanical, but the smarts can be… well, smart. The average iPhone has more computing power than it took to put a man on the moon and… well, driving a car isn’t rocket-science is it?

It’s got to be dead-cheap, makeable and repairable out of local materials anywhere on the planet, and affordable to… everyone. It’s the global Volkswagon for the 21st Century. If it can fly, then that’s an added bonus. If it can fly, and it only does 100km/h and it’s made out of bamboo and has airbags, then you can probably crash it without killing yourself.

I think you could probably set up the entire project for less than it would cost to buy a Lamborghini.