AHC flying cars

We discussed flying cars on secret projects.co.uk. under "Army Projects."
Move the POD back to the 1950s before Ralph Nader et al insisted on crash survivability, low emissions, etc.
Then you could build a chassis light enough to fly. To improve the power to weight ratio, install one of those small (300 horsepower) turbine engines developed in France during the 1950s and 1960s

Back during the 1950s, a French firm obtained a patent on a quad copter on top of a small sedan.
We suspect that they lacked sufficient Francs and horsepower to fly a prototype.

Another issue is range. Various flying car inventors suggested that they would be most valuable on long drives 5+hours. If traffic congestion increased earlier, then James Bond, Hugh Hefner and other urban playboys would want to launch their flying cars from rooftops whenever they wanted to go golfing ...... meet important clients.
Try selling flying cars as sports cars of the air.
 
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Imagine if the world of Blade Runner had become reality by now. I don't know whether that would be cool or not.
 
People don't care much for cars driving into their houses, and they care less about flying cars crashing into their roof tops. Anyone who had the wherewithall can own and fly a Robinson helicopter, from roof-top to the golf course, but learning how to fly a helicopter is more difficult than learning how to drive a car. It's easier to just order a pizza, delivered by automated drone. There are still multi-car pile-ups on the highway. Let's keep them there.

BTW, the Moller Sky-Car Company is still waiting for your investment, as it has for decades. I, myself, gave it a pass.
 
Simple: Any number of the articles which said flying cars will be on the market by 20XX come true.

But really, flying cars as popularly conceived of will never happen. What will happen is passenger drones. I think starting with a POD of 1900, there's a way to get passenger drones into somewhat common service (if you're rich) by 2017. Faster advances in drone technology, brilliant engineers, smart investors, governments willing to embrace the idea, etc.
 
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Flying cars are, by their nature, MUCH more expensive, limited, noisy, polluting etc. To get them in regular use, you'd have to massively increase the average income and/or (probably 'and') have major tech advances.

Not something I can imagine in the near future, let alone by today (in any TL that's close to ours).
 
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