(credit: Warner Brothers Animation)
Like the robber barons of the Gilded Age, some of the tech billionaires of Silicon Valley are using their vast wealth to try to transform the world according to their vision(s). Bill Gates has his foundation. Elon Musk wants us to ditch the fossil-fueled car. Both Musk and Jeff Bezos want space colonies. And Google's Larry Page? He wants those flying cars we were promised.
This week Bloomberg told us that Page owns not one but two flying car startups: Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk. Both companies appear rather media shy, but they seem to be working on small passenger aircraft that can take off and land vertically, according to reports from former employees, patent filings, and eye-witness accounts from Hollister Municipal Airport in California (where Zee.Aero is testing). The vehicles are probably using electric motors as well. "When the aircraft take off, they sound like air raid sirens," Bloomberg wrote.
Page's companies are but two among a score or more working on flying cars. There are old doyens of the field like Moller, which has been at it for more than 40 years, as well as more recent upstarts like Terrafugia and Aeromobil. It's certainly a lofty goal, but will it succeed? At the very least, it feels like some of the necessary enabling technologies are getting closer to being ready. Battery powered flight is achievable, as last year's English Channel crossing(s) demonstrated. Electric motors are smaller, lighter, and much less complex than jets, and the drone explosion serves as evidence that we can make ungainly shapes fly well even in the hands of amateurs, thanks to software.
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