By Alphabet still hasn’t gotten self-driving cars off the ground, and their CEO is already looking even deeper into the future. Larry Page has taken a personal interest in the development of flying cars, it seems, as Bloomberg reports he has put his personal money behind two companies — Zee.aero and Kitty Hawk — currently exploring the technology.
Bloomberg says that these companies were found to be the closest to that Jetsons reality, with the companies having worked through a number of workable prototypes over the years. In fact, they think they’re so far along that we’ll see the first of these “cars” within the next few years.
I say “cars” because some of the illustrations used in the report looked more like choppers and small planes. That’s essentially what a flying car will have to be: a very small plane.
These vehicles won’t ascend from a standing position or anything — much of the obtainable dream will have to come from models which use runway-like takeoffs — but if they are small, yet aerodynamic enough to fly 1 or 2 human beings around the sky without having to be a burden on air and ground infrastructure, then that’s all we’ll need.
The cars won’t be cheap, either, with many of them expected to cost somewhere in the hundreds of thousands range if they’re ever made available. The report goes into much more detail about the two companies and the history behind the exploration of this flying car concept, so be sure to give it a good read if you’re curious.
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