DAWN TO DUSK NEWS: motor show

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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">An ambitious firm
has revealed their plans for a new type of personal air transport vehicle that
takes off and lands like a helicopter. Will the idea fly? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">I
received an email this week from a researcher based in Los Angeles, who I
wanted to interview. “I hope to be back before 4pm,” it read. “Of course, if I
had a flying car I could better negotiate the LA traffic congestion and be back
earlier.”</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">An
unusually imaginative response, you might think. In fact it was pretty apt as I
wanted to ask him about the future of personal transportation, and the sender
was Professor Mario Gerla, who studies traffic congestion, pollution and
intelligent transport at the University of California, Los Angeles.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Many
of us have wished for a personal flying machine to lift us out of infuriating
traffic jams and deposit us on our driveways. With recent advances in
materials, power sources, and automation, those dreams may become reality more
quickly than many of us realise, as I’ve <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120813-flying-cars-ready-for-take-off">discussed
before</a>. Earlier this month, US aerospace start-up Terrafugia unveiled the
TF-X, a concept design for a radical new type of personal air transport
vehicle. So I talked to Carl Dietrich, co-founder of the company, to find out
how it might work.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">“We
think this is the right time to start seriously looking at the challenges
associated with creating what people call a flying car," he says.
"The vision is to try to create the future of personal transportation that
people have dreamed about for years." Dietrich believes all the required
technology already exists, and that initial discussions with the US Federal
Aviation Administration suggest existing regulatory obstacles can be overcome.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Terrafugia
is just one of a number of companies proposing personal aviation and it has
been taking orders for an earlier design – the Transition, a road-legal
aeroplane with foldable wings – for several years. The TF-X design is more
futuristic, but is more likely to provide what most of us dream of when we
think of flying cars.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">One
of its main selling points is the ability to <a href="http://www.terrafugia.com/tfx-vision">take off and land vertically</a>
like a helicopter. In car mode, the plug-in hybrid can rely on its electric
motors and battery packs. For lift-off it needs extra power from its
hydrocarbon combustion engine. Folded winglets are extended. Two huge motor
pods on either side of the vehicle are pointed vertically up, and the
propellers provide lift. Each pod has 16 independent electric motors, with its
own controller and battery pack, meaning a failure is not catastrophic.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">When
it attains the required altitude the pods start to point forward. A ducted fan
at the rear provides thrust and the wings start to operate as a conventional
aerodynamic surface to provide lift as it accelerates. At full speed the
propellers on the ends of the pods fold back and the vehicle enters “cruise”
mode. The TF-X has a maximum speed of 200 miles per hour and a proposed range
of 500 miles.</span><br />

<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Off-road visions</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"></span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">“With
electric propulsion we can go to much higher levels of what we call parallel
system architecture, so a given failure of a battery, or a motor controller, or
even a motor itself, would not necessarily result in total loss of propulsive
capability,” says Dietrich. “One of the big advantages of going to
electric-powered aircraft is that there is the opportunity to change the system
architecture away from what’s been typical in aviation to date where you have
one, two, or four engines tops,” he adds.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">“It’s
definitely an interesting proposition,” says Dr Frank Nieuwenhuizen, Aerospace
Engineer at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, and one of the
people behind the <a href="http://mycopter.eu/">EU MyCopter</a> project that
looks at how the air transport industry might change over the next century.
“The vision takes parts of what we think is important for a personal air
transportation system, like the vertical takeoff and landing feature for
example.”</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">However
Nieuwenhuizen cautions that futuristic visions are not enough to get flying
cars off the drawing board. “It’s not just the vehicle, it’s the complete
system that has to be set up for something like this to be useful. Acceptance
is a big part of it, and that’s where a lot of work still needs to be done in
terms of what will actually happen when something like this becomes available.
Would people want such a flying vehicle above their homes all the time?”</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Mario
Gerla likes the idea but warns the concept has significant hurdles to overcome.
"We always think how nice it would be if we're stuck in a traffic jam, to
all of a sudden, just take off from the road pavement and go where you
want," he says. "I can understand the idea of flying from airport to
airport, folding the wings and becoming a car. In the air, you're just one more
plane. But if you take off from your parking lot and fly a few blocks away, it
is more like a helicopter. It becomes much more flexible, and interesting, but
maybe dangerous."</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Terrafugia
originally hoped to be shipping its less radical Transition in 2009, but now
says the first customers will take delivery sometime in 2015 or 2016. As for
the TF-X, Dietrich acknowledges the concept is a long way from becoming
airborne, but he says discussing the idea early is a way to shorten the time it
will take to make it a reality, which he currently estimates as between eight
and 12 years.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">“We’re
a small company," he says. "We do have expertise in developing
flying/driving vehicles now, but we haven’t developed an electric powered
aircraft before. That’s a reason to take the concept public – to find potential
development partners.”</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Reservations
are being taken for the TF-X, although its price tag has not yet been revealed.
It's a fair bet that it'll cost more than the quoted $279,000 that the
Transition will set customers back by.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">But
even those of us unlikely to be able to afford the first personal flying cars
when they become available will benefit thanks to our early-adopting
neighbours, says Gerla, who as a result may be able to get home from his office
at UCLA more quickly.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">“If
you could levitate just some of these cars, fly them through the air and
deposit them somewhere else, you could remove some of the major road
congestion,” he says. “Just removing 10% or 15% of the cars would help it all
flow again.”</span><br />

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<b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Posted By :: Muhammad Usman</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Source::BBC</span></div>
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Flying cars???????

An ambitious firm has revealed their plans for a new type of personal air transport vehicle that takes off and lands like a...