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Comment by joshuahedlund | Hacker News Reader

This sounds cool but I'm not familiar with it. Why is it called a "flying car"? Is it the price point - is $279K significantly cheaper than most private airplanes? Or is there something in the construction that makes it more "carlike" than most private airplanes?

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It's street legal [1] and supposedly fits into your average sized garage[2]. You can't really drive a Cessna down your local neighborhood.

1: http://www.terrafugia.com/images/photogallery/March10_2012%2...

2: http://www.terrafugia.com/images/photogallery/LeavingGarageW...

"Roadable airplane" doesn't get the web traffic "flying car" does.

If you just want an airplane, you can get a lot more airplane for $279k. You can get a nice new Cessna 162 for $150k.

I'm not sure what the benefit of the concept is. You're only ever going to drive it from your house to the airport and back. A routine traffic accident will be very expensive and will attract unwanted attention and paperwork from the FAA and NTSB.

If you buy a regular plane you can leave it at the airport for very reasonable tie down or hangar fees, and know it's going to be safe and well cared for.

edit: Anticipating an objection, one could posit this is good for commuters. There is actually a segment of the general aviation population that fly themselves to a job in another city and back every day. You could use a roadable aircraft to drive to the office.

I'd say it's cheaper and better to buy a car and pay to keep it parked at the airport.

Still looking for any practical advantage. If anyone thinks of one I'd love to hear it.

Just thought of another possible objection: "But you don't have to get out, you can just drive into the airport and take off"... no, you can't. You're getting out of that plane to do your preflight checks or you have a death wish.

I think the biggest motivation for me would be to be able fly to someplace, maybe a small airfield, and not have to worry about making arrangements for a rental car or find someone to pick me up.

I doubt this is the final answer, but it's a good start.

> is $279K significantly cheaper than most private airplanes?

No, it's not. You can buy lower-end models of Cessna and Cirrus at similar price... and Cessna Skycatcher costs only half of that ($149,900).

And this is if you buy new. There's a huge market for used light aircraft out there, as they last for decades. You can buy a nice light airplane for less than 1/3rd of what these guys are charging, and something one could consider entirely decent for less than 1/5th.

Obviously! However, I felt that used aircraft vs new flying car wouldn't be a fair price comparison.

I can understand that, but I think the two markets are different enough to be worth pointing out. People who buy used cars are often buying something a few years old. By the time a car is ten years old, it's being traded around for a tiny fraction of its original cost, and maybe even headed off to be junked/recycled. Maintenance costs are starting to skyrocket, and because of all that, people tend to trade up frequently.

A used airplane is probably decades old. It's probably selling for a similar price to what it originally went for when it was new. Maintenance costs are high, but they were high when the thing was new, so that's not particularly remarkable.

I'd wager that the majority of light aircraft flying in the US today would qualify for "antique" license plates if they were cars. It's a substantially different market, where the equipment lasts longer and buying used is much more common.

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