I think even if it proves real, it would still take around 50 years to put in flying cars and such. But perhaps a bit less for using it in satellites. Still it's not too long on the humanity scale of time.
Or even cell phones. We were using radio signals in hand held devices for nearly 50 years before a vast majority of consumers were walking around with phones in their pockets in the mid to late 90s. Sure, there were early adopters in the late 80s and early 90s, but the technology was still expensive. And the technology (like walkie talkies) had existed for decades before...
This would very quickly move from "let's wait for NASA to do more tests" to "let's beat NASA to the test."
That's all assuming it's real, of course. I'd bet against it.
The most thrust anyone was getting was 750mN at 2.5KW. At that efficiency you need to have something that produces >32.7W/g just to hold itself up. That's rocket engine territory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-weight_ratio
We barely have supercapacitors that'll deliver that sort of power output. For a few seconds, maybe. Not accounting for the mass of the device itself.
Hopefully if this ever turns out to be something the efficiency will improve. But I'm not holding my breath.
(Number taken from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9474610 )
The only thing that's amazing about the EM Drive, if true, is that it doesn't require a propellant. It's extremely energy intensive, but since energy can be derived from a reactor or solar panels, this is often easy to overcome.
In an atmosphere solar panels are drag, and a reactor is completely insane.