The age of flying cars is creeping closer

Is it finally here? I’m talking about the age of the flying car.

Lesson summary

Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with stories about current events and trending topics. Today’s story is about flying cars. They are almost here. This is happening. You’ll learn about what the first flying cars will be like in today’s story.

This is a great story because you’re going to hear some words about flying and cars and helicopters—even I learned a new word preparing the story. I learned the word “vertiport.” So listen up for that.

Now you’ll also learn a common English expression today. “Creep closer” is the one I chose. There is a literal and a more figurative meaning. Creep closer is the expression today.

This lesson is number 684, so that means our producer, JR, has uploaded the lesson to PlainEnglish.com/684.

Flying cars: are they finally here?

The idea of a “flying car” has fascinated generations of futurists. In 1962, the world met George Jetson, the cartoon character from a hundred years in the future. He takes a flying car to work every day. The first “Back to the Future” movie came out in 1985; it featured a time-traveling and flying DeLorean car.

But no matter how much time passes, it seems that flying cars exist only in the movies or in our imaginations. The sad fact is, 138 years after the car was invented and 121 years after the airplane was invented, the dream of a flying car is just that: a dream.

But now, it is just possible to imagine a future of flying cars. A new generation of electric flying vehicles is creeping closer to commercial viability. For flying cars to become reality, three things have to line up: the technology, the regulations, and the market. Let’s take a look at each one.

Start with the technology. It’s now becoming clear what the first generation of flying cars will really be like. They are called “electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles.” That’s a mouthful: “electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles,” or “eVTOL’s” for short . The name gives it away. They are electric, so they run on batteries. And they take off and land vertically, like a helicopter.

Most eVTOL’s look like big drones, with room for a pilot and between one and four passengers. Some are autonomous: they don’t even have a pilot. At the bottom, they have skis, much like a helicopter. Helicopters have a single set of large rotors on the top. But eVTOL’s look more like drones: they have multiple sets of smaller rotors.

eVTOL’s are fast: some of them can go up to 300 kilometers per hour. They’re also relatively quiet, like a drone. They’re not silent—but they are a lot quieter than helicopters and airplanes.

Where can they go? eVTOL’s take off and land vertically, like a helicopter, so, like a helicopter, they need specially designed ports. A helicopter takes off from and lands at a heliport. An eVTOL will take off from and land at a “vertiport”—add that to your vocabulary!

Ready for takeoff? Not quite so fast. Flying car companies need government permission to operate. And it’s not just a matter of getting a thumbs-up. Governments need to create a whole new regulatory framework to deal with flying cars.

Think about it. This is an entirely new type of transportation, which presents an entirely new type of question. How can flying cars avoid crashing into one another? How can we make sure they don’t interfere with traditional airplanes? How will we know when they’re safe enough for passengers? What type of certification will pilots need? And if there aren’t pilots, how can we be sure the software that controls the vehicle is safe?

All of these problems have to be worked out—and there’s no template. Governments are extremely safety conscious with air travel. They’re moving slowly with flying cars.

And then, finally, there’s the market. Where will eVTOL’s operate and who will pay to use them? Since they require a vertiport, and since each unit costs over a million dollars, eVTOL’s will almost definitely start as taxis, not as personal flying cars. And they won’t be as flexible as taxis on the road. At the beginning, they’ll operate on a limited number of fixed routes.

Where might those be? One great place to start would be with common taxi routes in big cities—for example, between a city center and the airport. This makes sense because this is a high-value route: businesspeople have to get to the airport and they’re often willing to pay more to save time.

What about rural areas? Well, in a truly rural area, there aren’t heavily traveled point-to-point routes. But flying taxis could cut the cost of commuting from a small, far-away city to a big city.

There are also popular vacation routes for wealthy people. Think New York City to the Hamptons, or Boston to Cape Cod, or Silicon Valley to Lake Tahoe.

Or how about mega events? The world was going to have an up-close look at flying cars at the Paris Olympics. A German startup, Volocopter, was set to transport passengers in its eVTOL at the Olympic Games. But it looks like they won’t get the government permission they need.

For now , it seems like the first place that will have legitimate flying taxis will be Dubai. Dubai’s transportation regulator signed a contract with a startup that will allow flying taxi service starting in 2026.

Jeff’s take

Funny thing about imagining the future. In 1962, when the Jetsons came out, they imagined George Jetson taking a flying car to work. They didn’t imagine him living a life that didn’t require him to go to work every day! They just imagined him taking a cooler car to get the office.

It’s kind of crazy that there aren’t flying cars yet, right? In the last decade, there have been incredible, unimaginable innovations in digital technology—think about ChatGPT !

In cars and especially airplanes, there has been a lot of advancement in technology. It’s just we don’t notice it because most of it has been incremental improvements on the basic form that we already have. Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, expressed his disappointment this way. He said, “We were promised flying cars. Instead, we got 140 characters.”