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16 Comments on “What’s Wrong With This Picture: Freebird Edition...”
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There is so much wrong with this picture, especially if you happen to be an airplane or car enthusiast. The wrongness is magnified exponentially for those of us who are both. This craft is designed around a series of compromises in both of its roles. No thanks. I’ll stick with the Aeronca and the Jeep.
uh… love the 5-spoke dubs?
A waste of time and money; I’ve been reading about these types of vehicles all my life – that tells you something about their viability.
Didn’t look like they actually got out of ground effect (except for the Ken Burns panning still shot which isn’t credible).
Agree with the first poster, the compromise this thing has to make guarantees it will suck at everything it tries, except for the very questionable “flying car” niche…
N85523,
The biggest thing wrong with it is that the only places it can take off and land are disappearing at an exponential rate. Everytime there is a disaster, all the NIMBY’s are screaming and yelling because help takes so long to get there, but the task of bringing aid is always compounded by the lack airports. So we have to spend billions on helicopters. Then even the heli’s have no close base of operations, so they are half as effective as they could have been.
As I have said, it’s not going to be a huge success, precisely because of the compromises, but if Lake could stay in business for decades, these guys can as well.
I don’t think they intended to get out of ground effect on that shot. Clearly, they are still working on the controls, but that’s not unusual. Most new planes end up with changes at this point that the wind tunnel and software didn’t predict.
That it’s a video.
Landcrusher,
What you say is true. At least airport closures seemed to have slowed in the past several years, but the problem has not and will not go away.
As for Lake, even if it was a niche aircraft and didn’t sell in huge volumes, at least it was a viable finished product. They fly relatively well and are worthy seaplanes, though the single engine flying boat is perhaps not at utilitarian as more conventional float-planes. You don’t see Lakes in Alaska.
The bottom line is that these concepts keep showing up because of the fanciful notion of practical day-to-day aerial travel. The flying car (or roadable aircraft) simply cannot work beyond concept stage for the following reason. Cars need to be (somewhat) heavy and airplanes need to be light.
Looks like an experiment gone wrong…as if a Cessna and a Pontiac Aztek have interbred.
Ugliest…car…ever!
Why isn’t Roger Moore chasing it in a Matador, jumping over rivers with a hillbilly sherrif by his side?
I could have sworn the name was Terra-fugly. The car sure is.
I’ll go buy one of these as soon as I get a new bicycle for my fish.
It almost certainly doesn’t meet safety reqs for cars.
What’s wrong with it is that we were all supposed to have flying cars by now. Where is my 1950s’ future and when do we start wearing the tinfoil?
What’s wrong is that an 800 pound 100 horsepower fully enclosed vehicle could potentially be a really bitchin’ car if all it tried to do was be a car!
I’d bet it’s pretty safe as a road-car… all CF construction and a chassis rigid enough for flight… it should be.
All air-cars are compromises. This one seems to deal with them a bit better than its predecessors… probably thanks to new materials and engineering available nowadays. It doesn’t have to be a terrific car… it just has to be able to fit in the garage and drive itself to the airport for launch… this will probably be marketed as a recreational flyer that you don’t have to rent out hangar space to store or even buy aviation fuel for… and, let’s face it… if you’re rich enough to buy one, it’d make a great conversation piece as you drive down to the gas station before a flight.
The big question mark is performance in the air… that’s something I’d like to see, when it’s done.
What’s wrong?
I say it’s the design of the 1973-era-NHTSA-5-mph-bumper-inspired canard wing…