A plane you can drive

What is it about flying cars?
We’ve wanted to do this for about a hundred years. There have been many historic attempts that achieved some level of technical success. But we still haven’t reached the point where, on your way somewhere, you see something that truly and seamlessly integrates the two-dimensional world we live in with the three-dimensional sky above us — the sky that, I don’t know about you, but I really enjoy spending time in.

We looked at the historical attempts that had been made and realized that, despite the fact that we now have modern innovations that weren’t available before — composite materials, efficient aircraft engines with better power-to-weight ratios, and glass cockpit avionics that bring all the information you need directly to you in the cockpit — without addressing the problem from a different perspective, we would end up with the same results people have been getting for the last hundred years. And that’s not where we wanted to be.

So instead of trying to make a car that can fly, we decided to make a plane that can drive.
The result is the Terrafugia Transition — a two-seat, single-engine airplane that works like any other small airplane. You take off and land at a local airport. Then, once you’re on the ground, you fold up the wings, drive it home, and park it in your garage. And it works.

After two years of innovative design and construction, the proof of concept made its public debut in 2008. As with anything truly different from the status quo, testing didn’t always go smoothly. We discovered that when you go home with something broken, you actually learn far more than when everything goes perfectly the first time.

Still, we wanted to see the aircraft we had built finally off the ground. On our third high-speed testing deployment, on a bitterly cold morning in upstate New York, we got to do that for the first time.
The picture behind me was taken by the copilot in our chase aircraft just moments after the wheels lifted off. We were thrilled to see that image become a symbol of achieving something people had long thought impossible — all around the world.

The flight testing that followed was as basic and low-risk as possible, but it accomplished what we needed to move forward. It gave us credibility with the general aviation community and with the regulators who oversee aircraft design, especially in the United States.

About a year ago, the FAA gave us an exemption for the Transition, allowing an additional 110 pounds within the light sport aircraft category. That may not sound like much, but it’s very important. It allows us to deliver the Transition as a light sport aircraft, which simplifies certification and makes it much easier for you to learn to fly it. A sport pilot can be certified in as little as twenty hours of flight time.

At the same time, that 110 pounds is critical for solving the other side of the equation — driving. It turns out that driving, with its design and regulatory hurdles, is actually harder to solve than flying.
For those of us who spend most of our lives on the ground, that may sound counterintuitive, but driving involves potholes, cobblestones, pedestrians, other drivers, and a long list of federal motor vehicle safety standards to meet.

Necessity, however, remains the mother of invention. Much of the design work we’re proudest of came from solving the unique problems of operating on the ground — everything from a continuously variable transmission and liquid-based cooling system that allows us to use an aircraft engine in stop-and-go traffic, to a custom-designed gearbox that powers either the propeller in the air or the wheels on the ground, to an automated wing-folding mechanism, and to crash safety features.

We built a carbon-fiber safety cage that protects the occupants at less than ten percent of the weight of a traditional steel car chassis. But even that wasn’t quite enough. Vehicle regulations weren’t written with airplanes in mind, so we needed support from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

You may have seen in the news recently that they came through for us, granting special exemptions that allow the Transition to be sold in the same category as SUVs and light trucks. As a multi-purpose passenger vehicle, it’s now officially “designed for occasional off-road use.”

Now let’s see it in action.
You can see the wings folded neatly along the sides of the plane. You’re not powering the propeller — you’re powering the wheels. It’s under seven feet tall, so it fits in a standard garage. The automated wing-folding mechanism works in real time — just push a few buttons in the cockpit and the wings unfold. Once deployed, a mechanical lock engages, again from inside the cockpit, making the wings fully capable of handling any in-flight loads — just like lowering the top on a convertible.

And yes, we all wondered what our neighbors would think of seeing that.

Test Pilot: “Until the vehicle flies, 75 percent of your risk is that first flight.”
Radio: “It actually flew — yes!”
Radio 2: “That was gorgeous.”
Radio: “What did you think of that?”
Response: “It was beautiful from up here, I tell you.”

We were all incredibly excited about that little hop.
Our test pilot gave us the best feedback you can get after a first flight: he called it remarkably unremarkable. He later told us the Transition was the easiest airplane to land in his entire thirty-year career as a test pilot.

So, even though we built something revolutionary, we focused on doing as little new as possible.
We leveraged existing technology from general aviation and automotive racing. And when we had to innovate, we used an incremental design-build-test-redesign cycle that let us reduce risk in small steps.

Since we started Terrafugia about six years ago, we’ve had many of those small steps. We went from three of us working in an MIT basement while still in graduate school to about two dozen people in our first production facility near Boston.

We had to overcome challenges like keeping the weight below the light-sport limit, or figuring out how to respond politely when a regulator says, “That won’t fit through a toll booth with the wings extended,” along with all the other durability and engineering issues that come with a new kind of vehicle.

Still, if testing and construction of our two production prototypes go as planned, the first deliveries — to about a hundred customers who’ve already reserved their aircraft — should begin at the end of next year.
The Transition will cost about the same as other small airplanes. And no, I’m not out to replace your Chevy — but I do think the Transition should be your next airplane.

Here’s why.
Nearly all commercial air travel passes through a small number of large hub airports, but there’s a vast underused resource: thousands of local airstrips, many of which see very little activity. On average, there’s one within twenty to thirty miles of wherever you are in the United States.

The Transition gives you a safer, more convenient, and more enjoyable way to use those airstrips.

For those who aren’t pilots yet, there are four main reasons pilots don’t fly as much as they’d like: weather, cost, door-to-door travel time, and mobility at your destination.

When bad weather comes, you just land, fold up the wings, and drive home.
If it rains, it doesn’t matter — you’ve got a windshield wiper.
Instead of paying to keep your airplane in a hangar, you can park it in your garage.
And the unleaded automotive fuel we use is cheaper and better for the environment than traditional avgas.

Door-to-door travel time is reduced because, instead of lugging bags, finding parking, taking off your shoes, or pulling your airplane out of the hangar, you’re simply getting to where you want to go.
And mobility at your destination? Solved — just fold up the wings and keep going.

The Transition expands our horizons while making the world smaller and more accessible.
It continues to be a fabulous adventure.

I hope you’ll take a moment to think about how you could use something like this to give yourself more access to your own world — and to make your travel more convenient and more fun.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share it with you.