Enterprising French chap cranks up €100k 'flying car' A French entrepreneur is hoping that by 2015, those with €100,000 in spare change will slip the surly bonds of earth aboard his Vaylon Pégase (Pegasus) flying car. Artists impression of Pegasus in flight. Pic: Vaylon La voiture volante. Pic: Vaylon Jérôme Dauffy's vehicle is actually a powered paraglider concept, with the …
I would be very, very interested to see what the French government wants to get for their €60k contribution. The French aren't stupid, I wonder who this guy is married to.
You can't even test the tires for that kind of money, much less all the other stuff that breaks when you hybridize any two things that are substantially different. My lion-horse hybrid was a disaster. Of course the lions are going to be angry if they have to chase something down to mate with it. Stupid horses.
In seriousness, I used the tire testing example because we've designed tire testing rigs for a few tire manufacturers and it is really, really involved. They've got use specific criteria that I wouldn't have considered in a million years (that's probably why we don't make tires...). But there's a lot more to them than some steel belts wrapped in rubber.
If a vehicle like this is something somebody wants then this guy has my best wishes. I'm fairly positive his price point is really, really low though. It's a bit of a joke, but if you 'flying' to anything there's a default cost multiplier of 3,553,221 to everything involved.
The French aren't stupid. Since when?
As for testing tyres, who cares when the wheels will collapse on the first rough landing. Ask any mountain-bikers. Spoken wheels don't do rough landings.
On the positive side, if the French are in it when it collapses on landing, they can just hop to their destination !!! See what I did there ;-)
@AC, Since they figured out that running away from the bullets and blockading calais tends to get positive results for the French.
One good example: They dropped out of the Eurofighter program early on and built their own Rafale instead. It came out lighter, more manoeuvrable, more versatile, capable of carrier service from the start, cheaper and was flying sooner - and they didn't have to faff around waiting for guns to arrive after the plane was officially in service.
They know their stuff, the French.
The €60k contribution plus probably about the same amount of money for checking the guys calculations is almost indistinguishable from zero in the arms industry context. Seems good value for money for checking out the feasability and capability of the concept; if it flies and lands a few times without killing the guy then much more work will of course have to be done.
I am liking the PAL-V concept. although the Terrafugia 2.0 concept looks pretty slick as well.
I am actually a bit disappointed in El Reg's Flying Car Desk, as there have been many updates in this field with more promise than this article(and far more than Moller's works), with little to no mention. I was beginning to wonder if they had closed that desk (cutbacks, you know).
Flying Goggles -->
I don't see it being very practical though e.g. how long would it take to fold up that massive parachute after landing? What happens if it's raining or windy?
Since it's slower in the air than on the ground (and slower depending if the wind is behind) so it's probably most useful in areas without an adequate road network, or where there are perhaps rivers or other natural obstacles to cross. Maybe it would be useful for some kind of "flying doctor" type role.
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If it's that light, why oh why didn't they give it a decent lightweight hull as well and make it so it's amphibious as well (Ok, the frenchies don't need this but for the rest of us...)
With air sea and land capability they'd probably more than double their potential sails (pun intended.
Paraglider canopies suck for any sort of long distance flight. They lack penetrating power when flying against the wind. The single seat paramotor units already have a hard time with a 5 knot headwind. I've seen one trying to get into a 10 knot headwind, with full power, and barely have any forward groundspeed at all. Also, good luck taking off in one with ANY sort of cross wind component!
This looks suspiciously like the Parajet Skycar (or Skyrunner now I guess). They've been taking preorders for years. So far as I know that one was the first practical 'flying car' yet no one ever seemed to be talking about it, even after they made a successful trip of over 1k miles in it. That and last time I looked they were taking preorders at half the price of this one.
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