I Want My Flying Car

It's road construction season here in Minnesota,  which gives me some bonus time during my daily commute to ponder things like who to blame for all the construction. I've decided to reserve some portion of it for Science at large. The reason is simple: no flying car yet. 

Science would probably point to the Transition, a plane that converts into a car and drives off, currently slated to be available in 2015, but I am not fooled so easily. The Transition is classified as a "Light-Sport Aircraft", which means it is more aircraft than automobile. You need a pilots license to operate it and can only take off and land at an airport. It's cool and all but look, George Jetson didn't need no pilot's license and I don't either. I also don’t  live or work near an airport so this just isn't gonna grant me freedom from our roads and the damnable construction that comes with them. 

To determine if there is any hope for such an escape in my lifetime I did a Google patent search for "flying car" and scanned the results. The "Counter rotating ducted fan flying vehicle" caught my eye, if only because I had no earthly idea what that meant, but it seemed to have some promise at first:

"The user has helicopter type controls available in the cockpit to make the transitions from an automobile driver to a helicopter/aircraft pilot in an extremely short period."

Unfortunately that patent has lapsed so no rotating counter ducts action for me. 

Counter Rotating Ducted Car Thing

The "Winging Car" has an active patent and boasts of "two jet engines at the rear" (numbers 2 & 3 in the image) when in flight mode, which I gotta say, sounds pretty awesome. The diagrams and accompanying description suggest it is a mostly-automatic transformation between car and plane. I bet you have to make your own Transformers noise while it happens though, there's no mention of it in the patent, a gross oversight that makes me question Yan Goldshteyn's design and ability to deliver my flying car.

Winging Right For Us Car

Here is one that looks like hover craft meets car and is maybe a bit more likely to come to fruition as it is held by the Rolls-Royce Corporation. That's the defense and aerospace side of the company, not the luxury car side, but maybe they talk to each other? I want my flying car to be pretty swank.

Hover Rolls

Some of these seem pretty cool and are a decent start. Sadly I can't find any that fold into a suitcase. Get on it Science!

Nick Vigabool

@MrVigabool