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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

It won't get approval to launch from the streets, simply because you already aren't allowed to launch a helicopter or plane from the street. It will remain a two mode vehicle which you will have to drive / fly to an airport or otherwise licensed location before it is allowed to transform / take off / land.

This legislation is unlikely to change anytime soon.

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You can't land/takeoff an aircraft from public roads, for obvious reasons, but it's perfectly legal to do so to/from suitable open terrain, which in the case of light aircraft isn't hard to find. So while you're not going to be taking off directly from the highway (nor would you likely want to), it should be perfectly legal to drive off to a short trail somewhere and launch from there.

Anyway, I don't see it feasible to buy one of these, spend 500,000+ USD to occasionally travel somewhere on your vacation? That is the same reason why we did not buy a helicopter (mainly because we would have it parked throughout the year and also, the energy consumption makes it unviable for daily use).

Until a car is created that can take off from the streets and has low energy consumption, it cannot be said that we have a "flying car", at the moment we only have a "car-helicopter hybrid".

As someone learning to fly, I do see a great usecase though. There are a reasonable number of airfields in the UK and I can usually rely on there being one within a reasonable distance of where I want to go. That "reasonable distance" is still going to be some miles though. The ability to fly most of the way, land at an airfield and then drive the last bit makes a lot of sense.

Legislation is less of a factor than the presence of overhead utility lines near most public streets.

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