Do you think in our lifetime we will see flying cars or cars that at least run on electricity?

Answer 1

Absolutely. Whether or not "everyone" uses them is quite an unknown, but my neighbor is building this (and I'm helping when I can).

www.labicheaerospace.com

It still requires you to have a pilots license, but is much more practical energy-wise than the Moller Skycar (www.moller.com).

The Tesla electric car is a nice machine. Some e-cars, like GM's EV1 (which were all destroyed for some bizarre reason - there is a book that has some theories on it), are well designed. There were some charging stations that were capable of charging the battery packs in 10 minutes.

But even the Tesla has a large enough range that most people could use it for their commuting on a daily basis and never have to waste their 2 minutes at a gas station. So, in some ways, it might be a larger time saver.

Other things to consider are the new solar cells being developed. current research is enabling solar cells to be made on plastics, or even fabric, with efficiencies reaching 40%. That would enable a car like the Telsa to have it's full body skin to be a solar cell and trickle charge the car, extending the range even further.

But with a flying car like the FSC-1, you can still go on long family trips. I'd love to have both.

Feel free to write me via my profile if you'd like to ask more detailed questions.

Thanks!

Answer 2

There have been fling cars and electric cars for many years.
One of the first James Bond movies had a flying car.

And the latest electric car - Tesla Roadster
0-60 in under 4 seconds
Tops out at over 130 mph
Runs 250 miles on one charge
Can be recharged, dead to full in 4 hours

Answer 3

No. Well at least not unless anti gravity or fussion generation become mainstream. Current methods of electric power storage are too inefficient, best case you'd be able to fly a very short distance. Fuel cells can't produce the energy fast enough. Even with conventional engines these things can barely get airborn.

So unless we find a way to switch off their weight or a cheap way to produce massive amounts of power then they will never be practical. Even if they were practical they'd still be a huge waste of energy.

Electric cars in general? There are a few running around the bay area. But a 4 hour recharge doesn't really compare to filling my M35 in two minutes does it?

(Yahoo is really irritating me with these stupid answer bots. You'd think that they'd play their stupid games somewhere off line instead of unleashing them on their paying customers!)

Answer 4

We already have cars running on electricity. See the Tesla at

http://teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1