Trump has referenced both at least once with little else being said about either. That I've heard anyway and I don't keep up that much.
But maybe a month or a little more ago I was watching a podcast that brought up self driving cars and that they were more or less to swing people into flying cars. Pointing out that automation would be needed. Which kind of made sense, I mean look at the roads, road rage etc, the skies would be a mess.
So what popped this podcast back into mind yesterday? I work at an auto auction and we handle Tesla storage cars, trade ins, off lease I'm guessing, not new cars. Any who, I'm the one that keeps them at/above a 25% so I drive em around the lot several times a week.
I don't pay attention to the models, not really a Tesla fan but they are fun to drive at work and have tremendous acceleration, but some have regular circular steering wheels, others have what I think I've heard called a "Bat Wing" steering wheel.
So yesterday I was driving one back to storage area with a bat wing (airplane yoke?), and I was like damn, I'm sitting in a futuristic cockpit! The screen generates your surroundings, and it certainly seemed if they were trying to ease people into self driving flying cars, this could be a way.
So I'm curious to see what thoughts or theories others here may have around this. If any.
I myself am fine on terra firma with gas IC engines, but if these flying cars ever come to be and they have a manual override, I'd certainly be up there giving one a whirl!
Could be a situation where a hydrogen fuel cell makes sense (using current technologies, they're lighter than batteries, but very inefficient to charge/fill).
There have been some experiments with electric powered aircraft in the last 15-20 years - we've only recently gotten to a point (again using publicly available information from businesses) where they can reasonably be used for regional flights (say DC to Philadelphia or maybe New York, or LA to Vegas).
There may be much more dense batteries coming along, or this could be an application of a nuclear battery that was recently revealed in China, which right now only provides a small power output, but lasts a very long time (50 years) so does have a high energy density.
Hopefully we're entering a time of great improvements to quality of life... as it really does seem to have been getting worse in a lot of ways for decades at this point.
With a true to Tesla's vision of zero point, you would only need an antenna to draw the required energy to run an electric motor/ducted fan or propeller setup.
A small turbine driving a generator is the best answer. Hydrocarbon fuels have much higher specific energy than batteries, and high energy density than hydrogen.
Hydrogen keeps sticking in my mind, I'd like to see this developed further. Or what further developments have been made with it.
But I've heard of a couple of inventors that died that had supposedly invented engines that run on water. One in a Nitter Poast link in a reply here, although may be the same dude I'd heard of previously.
Honestly, all else aside, I'm really looking forward to MAHA. Major steps in improving health goes a long way in quality of life.