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Terrafugia Inc., the Woburn, Mass., company developing the Transition flying car, said it plans to begin delivering the vehicle to customers in 2015 or 2016. In the meantime it is working on a successor model called the TF-X, which will take off and land vertically, fly at more than 200 mph and seat four people.
The TF-X is also a plug-in hybrid. It uses electric motors and tilting rotor blades take off and a gasoline engine and ducted fan to propel it in forward flight.
Terrafugia chief executive officer Carl Dietrich said the TF-X is in the earliest stages of design and feasibility studies. However, he said the company is certain that building such a machine is “physically possible” using off-the-shelf technology that is available today. That technology includes fly-by-wire controls and so-called intelligent systems to make operating the vehicle easier, safer and more convenient than flying a typical small private plane.
The company said this type of flying machine, which to some degree flies itself, reflects the not-so-distant future of airborne personal transport. The person at the controls of the TF-X would not have to be a licensed pilot, Dietrich said, because the most challenging elements of flying, from control coordination to precision navigation, would happen automatically under computer control.
In many ways the TF-X concept of automated flying mirrors recent development of self-driving cars. Both types of transportation could be widely available during the next decade.
