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Comment by ajmurmann | Hacker News Reader

Why do flying cars not make sense, assuming the technology was perfect? Cars could go more direct routes to their destinations and we could give so much ground area that's currently dedicated to cars back to pedestrians and other modes of transportation.

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I just don't believe the math on efficiency. Wheels are darn good in efficiency. Wings sure can work in some scenarios, but most flying cars I see are some type of quadcopter or like which I find questionable. And anti-gravity is not happening.

Aside from technical concerns, they're loud as hell during takeoff and landings, making their use inside populated places a bit controversial.

Like most other objections better this sounds like the technology isn't ready.

Energy. Flight control. Congestion. Accidents. Noise. All those would be much difficult, worse / problematic or even catastrophic when flying vehicles would be accessible to literally everyone, including criminals, drunks and teenagers.

Also not to forget misuse scenarios. We already blockade roads around large events when there is lot of pedestrians around. How would we do same for the sky? If there was hundreds or thousands of flying cars. Drones are one thing, but tonne or multi-tonne vehicles?

The occasional helicopter flying over a city is already noisy enough to be annoying. There's no way people would put up with hundreds of flying cars above at any given moment unless they're much less noisy than that.

It would take too much energy to keep them off the ground.

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