The PAL-V One, A Flying Car Worth Driving

The Terrafugia Transition flying car is capturing headlines after a public showing at the New York Auto Show and as it edges nearer to a limited FAA certification. However, if we're realistic about the plane-car as a consumer product, it's very unlikely to be a commercial success. PopMech has written at length about this recently, but to sum up: First, the Transition is awkward. No matter how revolutionary a car may be, it's hard to get buyers to swallow a $279,000 price tag if the thing is ugly. And if we base everything on published specs, the Terrafugia isn't very good as a car or as a plane. it's a compromise to utility and performance at everything it does?the Amphicar of the air. A product has to be good for people to want it.

And this is where I personally think the Dutch-built and recently tested PAL-V One might be a much more realistic approach to the dream of the flying car. The three-wheeled, two-passenger car has stowable, manual-folding rotors up top and an auto-folding propeller at the rear. The reasons it's a better concept? First of all, it looks cool, or at least as cool as possible when toting along flight gear. Second, it should be able to handle quite well since it uses lightweight construction as well as a leaning suspension system borrowed from the Carver One.

The third reason is safety. Powered heavier-than-air flight is dangerous. It's really the biggest barrier to putting millions of motorists in the air (and all our road rage would cause catastrophes in the skies). But there is another thing to consider; Fixed-wing flight like the Terrafugia Transition uses is only slightly safer than rotary wing flight, like a helicopter. Loss of power in either one of these situations is a pretty serious emergency.

The PAL-V One, however, uses an alternative: gyrorotor flight. In this style of aircraft, an unpowered rotary wing rides above the fuselage at a controlled angle while a pushing propeller drives the vehicle forward. As it accelerates, the rotary wing picks up angluar velocity and eventually develops lift the same way a helicopter does. Because this wing is unpowered and dependent only upon forward motion for rotation and lift, loss of power isn't as dangerous. These craft can safely land completely without power.

Danger does lurk, though, because autogyros are subject to something called pilot induced oscillation, a situation in which an inexperienced pilot exceeds the performance limits of the craft and causes an unrecoverable stall. With modern electronic nannies, however, this problem should never surface.

There are other appealing elements of the?PAL-V One. A takeoff runway of just 540 feet and a landing requirment of 100 feet mean the craft can take off and land almost anywhere that's flat. A single engine keeps weight, cost, and complexity to a minimum. Top speeds of 112 mph on land and in air mean it'll keep up with traffic in either situation.

There are plenty of pitfalls ahead of the PAL-V One though. Concepts like this always look great on paper, but getting down to the details of funding, certification, and production seem to be the hardest part of the flying car fantasy. We'll be watching closely.

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