So, about those flying cars everyone on social media brings up every time a new piece of tech is introduced. It may actually come to reality now that AeroMobil has set its sights on 2017 for a commercial launch of its first flying car and plans to release fully autonomous flying cars to follow.
During SXSW (South by Southwest) in Austin, Texas on Sunday, AeroMobil CEO Juraj Vaculik provided more details about his five-year-old startup and its ambitions to move the daily commute into the clouds.
"[Self-driving] technology is coming to the car, but as an autopilot, it's already there," Vaculik said in an interview. "There are already systems for taking off and landing automatically. These two technologies can work together."
Transit has turned into a prison system that incarcerates commuters in traffic, in bad infrastructure and in airports, says the AeroMobile CEO.
"We need another revolution, we need a revolution in personal transportation," Vaculik stated during the music and arts festival.
Yet while technology may exist to make it happen the revolution may not come quick because of the costs, Vaculik concedes. AeroMobil's flying car prototype is described by its maker as a "Ferrari with wings" and its prospective customers as "wealthy supercar buyers."
But with all tech that lives a full and meaningful life, the price point eventually comes down. For the price of self-flying cars to drop far enough for everyone to enjoy, the technology will first need to rise above merely serving as a hobby for the super rich.
Advances in self-driving cars will help flying cars move closer to real-world adoption and the two modes of transit may find success in the same model. But right now self-driving, autonomous vehicles remain at prices that are too high for the majority of the motoring public.
Google's vision of self-driving cars may predict exactly how the world will move from points A, B, and C. The search engine company expects a decline in individual car ownership and a rise in ridesharing.
With driverless cars and self-flying vehicles, the speeds and efficiency at which they travel would drastically decrease the need for parking and economize driving through ridesharing, according to remarks from Google co-founder Sergey Brin at last year's KV Summit. Autonomous vehicles could become like buses and subways, excepted they'd be much more plentiful, he believes.
"They just come and get you when you need them," Brin stated. "You can also make much more efficient road use, if you -- and this is not something we've developed yet, but it's certainly been simulated by many -- they can form trains. They can go at high speed, perhaps much higher than our highway speeds here."
It will be a while before autonomous vehicles are adopted by the mainstream. But in the meantime, check out the third generation of AeroMobil's flying car in the video below:
