Let's Talk Flying Cars

Anything Less is Unacceptable

As we watch a war of drones unfold, it is clear to any technical person that a flying car future is infinitely smarter than an electric car future. Aside from the road issue, EVs can only access 0.00001% of the Earth, not to mention that it is the least desirable fraction of the Earth.

The problem we currently face is that the thought leaders of the day seem to be handicapped in that they think that any future conveyances must be battery-powered as it is the only carbon-free avenue forward. But this is not true. It turns out that you can heat natural gas to produce Hydrogen for carbon-free power, either through internal combustion or fuel cells. Then, you can power flying cars with liquified natural gas as batteries simply weigh too much and do not have the energy density necessary to make flying cars practical.

The arguments for a flying car future are so great as to make the debate non-sensical. First and foremost, “What is the most important criteria?”. It is that whatever form of conveyance society chooses, it should bring the greatest convenience and pleasure to the greatest swath of humanity. This is then defined as “What offers the greatest performance?” tempered with “What can be most affordably provided?” Fortunately and ironically, flying cars offers the greatest performance at the lowest price.

The first criteria really need not even be debated. Flying cars afford everyone the shortest travel times and best experiences. There is some issue with bad weather but it is equivalent to the similar limitations of any other form of conveyance. The second criteria of affordability is similarly overwhelmingly positive. A flying car eliminates 80% the complexity and cost of surface vehicles as it eliminates the suspension, transmission, wheels, brakes, steering, and even air conditioning. It is actually stupefying how much simpler a flying car can be and it has been proven so conclusively by the drones used for fireworks displays. Clearly, if you can coordinate drones to do fireworks, using them to ferry people around is child’s play.

The only thing holding up the proliferation of practical flying cars is a false conclusion that fossil fuels cannot power the future. The fact is fossil fuel is a form of chemical battery that has stored up millions of years of solar energy. The issue isn’t that we can’t use this chemical battery, it is just that the supply of this naturally provided battery is finite and for some, an indoctrinated belief that we cannot produce plant fertilizer because it arguably has a detrimental impact. However, the truth is that we can decarbonize fossil fuel just by preheating it and we can produce this chemical battery using green energy so that burning it would be a carbon-neutral process.

In the end, it is a pretty simple choice. Do we use a fossil-fuel-based chemical battery to give us personal conveyances that give us access to every single glorious part of this planet or do we use far inferior conventional batteries that will never make it possible for everyone to have access to this planet? Do we pay to produce carbon-neutral fuel using green electricity or do we pay to produce zillions of batteries and build and maintain roads?

The only draw back to a fossil-fuel powered flying car future is that at some point, we won’t have the free bounty of 500 million years of collected solar energy in the form of fossil fuel and will have to produce that energy otherwise and 100 million barrels of oil-energy-equivalent is a tall order. But the answer isn’t pathetic electric cars that take us nowhere. The answer is to not settle for a destination-limited future and instead, make cars that go anywhere.