![]() ![]() If the car in question is flying through the air in many small pieces due to an explosion, see External Combustion. note This is why far fewer people have pilot's licenses than driver's licenses, and why professional pilots are a better-paid and more prestigious job than most (though not all) professional drivers. The most difficult problem to solve will be that flying a plane requires significantly more skill and training than driving a car. ![]() Still, there are attempts to fix this problem. One of the more serious problems is that as they are, in the eyes of the law, both automobiles and aircraft, meaning they require both a driver's license and a private pilot's license to operate. In addition, ones whose wings need to be removed don't actually offer the go-anywhere utility that people seeking a "flying car" want: you'll always have to drive back to wherever you stored those wings if you want to fly again. Such vehicles are expensive, clunky to operate in either form, and not the least bit fuel-efficient. However, the idea has never gotten off the ground (pun intended) for the same reason combined baseball/football stadiums went out of style: their functional needs are so different, making something that does both only succeeds in making it lousy at both. There have been some real-life attempts at combining cars and aircraft, but rather than flying cars, they're better described as "road-able aircraft," basically small planes whose wings can be folded/removed so they can be driven on normal roads. It's also possible that with climate change now a primary concern, and with it the realisation that car emissions contribute a huge chunk to greenhouse gases, pollution and climate change effects, depictions of cars flying en masse may start to smack of environmental disregard, especially as less and less people today are opting to drive on-the-ground cars, in favour of taking-or demanding, if they don't have-mass public transit. The idea of flying vehicles being as common as cars in the future is still frequently used, but in modern works they're more likely to look like futuristic VTOL aircraft than actual cars that fly. Nowadays, this trope is rarely played straight, at least not in its most literal form. This is usually handwaved with some mention of an antigravity device. ![]() This would require some rather fanciful technology for a vehicle to get off the ground without wings or a rotor system in place. Otherwise you could say we already have them in the form of helicopters and small planes. ![]() When people think of flying cars, they generally mean a vehicle that looks, drives and behaves exactly like an automobile. The lack of flying cars in Real Life is a common complaint. If flying cars are sufficiently common in the setting, they may lead to We Will All Fly in the Future-nothing screams "futuristic (or alien) city-scape" better than giant buildings with all the space between them crammed with flying shiny specks! Either way, you need a flying car! Or sometimes it's just a way to demonstrate that a show is set in a far-flung time and/or place. In a setting more similar to the present day, a flying car can be used to show off the credentials of a superhero or a character who's rich enough to be one of the Fiction 500. Or the story is set in present-day Earth and you simply want to give your hero a Cool Car, but what do you do when missiles, Nitro Boost and Ejection Seats don't suffice to show just how much of a badass he is? Simple: flying cars! Or, your present-day Earthling heroes are visiting an alien planet whose society is light years ahead of us. It's The Future and you want to show how far technology has advanced. Professor Layton and the Unwound Future ![]()
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