Flying Cars Are Coming

John Martin | Nov 01, 20250

The Joby four passenger eVTOL air taxi

In the 1985 movie "Back to the Future," Michael J. Fox jumps into Christopher Lloyd's levitation-equipped Delorean and the two take off into the year 2015, ending up into a swarm of flying cars.

The year 2015 has already passed a decade ago, and except for a few experimental examples, we still have no mass market flying cars.

According to Wikipedia, a flying car must meet these specifications: "A flying car must be capable of safe and reliable operation both on public roads and in the air. Current types require manual control by both a driver and a pilot. For mass adoption, it would also need to be environmentally friendly, able to fly without a fully qualified pilot at the controls, and come at affordable purchase and running costs."

The first true flying car (or "roadable aircraft") was the Aerocar, designed and built by Moulton Taylor in Longview, Washington in 1949. It featured a rear propeller and wings that could be unfolded and flight ready in five minutes by one person. Its top speed was 60 mph on the road and 110 mph in the air. Taylor built only six. The original price was $9,995. They worked quite well, but they never received widespread interest or proposals for mass production. Today, two are in museums, and a third is in storage with a $2.5 million dollar asking price.

Since that time, little interest has developed to put flying cars on the market. One big concern was safety. How could one deal with the very great likelihood of numerous mid-air collisions with hundreds of them buzzing around everywhere? And what about the noise? Instead, beginning in the 1970's, limited numbers of people bought and flew ultralight aircraft. Later, in the 2000's, because of their much lower cost and better versatility, drones became popular, and ultralight use diminished somewhat.

As drones became bigger and more sophisticated, people started to observe the obvious- "Why not build big drones to carry people around?" With the boom of efficient electric cars and high capacity batteries in full swing, we can do it. Big drones are quieter and easier to fly than helicopters and other aircraft. They are also much more maneuverable and safer in crowded traffic.

Today, the issue of safety and mid-air collisions is greatly diminished by developments already done by Tesla on its own cars. Today's models have cameras and/or RADAR devices and software to detect oncoming collisions and other hazards. These same features could be installed onto all flying cars. In the air, their efficiency could be even greater. In a car, there are three available maneuvers-slow down or stop, swerve to the left, and swerve to the right. In the air, there are also two others-swerve up, and swerve down. Of course, simple logic can tell you that preventing every last collision is impossible, but we can get close.

The Joby four passenger eVTOL air taxi

Several companies are already working to develop flying cars. The leader is Joby Aircraft, founded in 2009, which has already built and is now flying five test models. Each can carry a pilot and up to four passengers and some luggage-up to a maximum payload of 1000 pounds. They can get 100 to150 miles on one battery charge.

Each Joby has six tiltable carbon fiber bladed propellers that enable it to switch from vertical to level and back to vertical flight in mid-air as well as on the ground and during take-off and landing. They resemble six-bladed helicopters, but are 100 times quieter.

The proposed uses for the first production craft will be air taxis in crowded neighborhoods. A best case taxi trip from Manhattan to the JFK Airport can take an hour, or much longer in bad traffic. A Joby trip would take seven minutes, and it would cost less than a third of a helicopter ride. Later, as the system develops and becomes widely used, the price could drop to that of an ordinary ground taxi or Uber.

Joby craft are very easy to fly-no more difficult than a typical drone. Unlike helicopters, they can be piloted proficiently with minimal training or even autonomously. They have already completed over 1000 test flights and the first three of five FAA certification steps.

Joby is utilizing high tech lightweight materials to the utmost-tempered aluminum, carbon fiber, and even complicated parts made of 3D printed titanium.

Toyota and Delta are partnering with Joby and are helping with the manufacturing of the more ordinary parts.

As Joby progresses with its air taxis and satisfies sufficient demand, it is likely to begin filling the gap for individual air vehicles for common people- one and two seat vehicles for routine commuting.

Joby isn't the only player in the flying car market; there are several others. But so far, besides Joby, only Archer has done much development. It has built two Midnight aircraft, but they are well behind Joby. On September 7, Archer said that six more were under construction and three of them were in the final stages.

In future years, many competitors are likely to jump onto the band wagon of building flying cars. We will have to wait to see who eventually comes out on top. But so far, Joby has a substantial lead.

Some day, one of us might exclaim, "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need... roads."

SOURCES

1. Aerocar, Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerocar

2. Flying Car, Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_car

3. The Complete Flight Profile of Joby's eVTOL Aircraft,

https://www.jobyaviation.com/

5. Is Joby The Future of Commuting? – The Story and Engineering Behind Joby Aviation, YouTube, June 2025.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk-qsVfTv_8

6. Archer Aviation New Revelations, It's Even Worse Than We Thought, YouTube, Aug. 31, 2025.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_534dtGSVpo