Gentlemen! Behold! The Autovolantor flying car!
Dr. Paul Moller enters the room, the very picture of an inventor: a middle-aged man wearing a lab coat and spectacles with a puff of crazed cotton candy hair, his eyes wobbling around in a cadaverous, rictus-stricken skull like googly, dislocated ping pong balls. "Gentlemen! I have perfected the flying car! BEHOLD!" Withdrawn from his pocket, a tiny Hot Wheels Ferrari with model airplane wings glued to the side is pinched between thumb and forefinger and whooshed crazily around the inventor's head while Dr. Moller indulges in an impressive recitation of mouth-made engine noises. The audience sighs. They have seen this all before. "Doctor, if we may get started," Moller's court-appointed psychiatrist implores. "And please take off my coat."
It certainly seems a plausible enough scenario to explain Moller's incredible announcement that he had invented a flying car, the Autovolantor, for a Russian businessman who will pay $5 million for the prototype. It certainly explains the proof-of-concept. According to Moller, they used a Ferrari 599 as a starting point, added an electric unit and eight "Rotapower" rotary engines. Moller claims that, on a single charge, the Autovolantor can go 40 miles on the ground and fly up to 150MPH in the air... until it comes plummeting out of the sky within 15 minutes.
"The Autovolantor is technically possible, but flying it in U.S. cities is not going to be politically acceptable until it has been deployed successfully in other roles and environments. Practical or not, it excites the imagination to think about being able to rise vertically out of a traffic jam and just go," said Moller.
Crazy? Perhaps... like a fox. Perhaps there's a real flying car to be jetted around Serbia by a Russian oil baron somewhere — we know it's technically possible — but right now, all signs seem to point to Moller being in the process of cannily collecting a check for $5 million based upon nothing but an attractively aerodynamic Micro Machine and a zero-hour PowerPoint presentation.
Moller unveils its latest flying car, the Autovolantor [Motor Trend]
Moller - The Autovolantor [Moller]
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"it excites the imagination to think about being able to rise vertically out of a traffic jam and just go"
...and then everyone else gets one.
You know, every time this guy gets in the news, I feel almost sad when I point out that the only two craft that he's gotten off the ground--briefly--are two manky flying-saucer hovercraft that would have been mildly impressive back in the 60s. But as long as the Russki who's throwing around petrodollars doesn't sic the Mafiya on his ass, I guess that he's doing well for himself.
Ah, Moller, king of vaporware (vaporcraft?). Like they say about Fusion power, it's 30 years away, and it always will be. At least this model adds what might pass for control surfaces, probably much smaller than they need to be to stop this thing from spinning out of control at the slightest turn. Honestly, he has quite the scam going here. Just release a new model every few years and then rake in the investment bucks "developing" the technology, and when it becomes painfully clear that making it work is "just" out of reach, release the next new model and say "This time for sure!" I can't wait to see the slick computer graphic animations of this model flying through the sky. Which is as far as the flying will actually ever get.
Flying cars will never be feasible until they find a way of getting those yellow and white stripes on the road to hover in mid-air.
You think a fender-bender at 35 MPH is bad, try one at 1,000 feet up.
Why the Ferrari? I think if he would have chosen the DeLorean, with the Flux Capaciter option, he looks much more credible.
Charming by-product: Journalists who come upon a Moller press release and write a breathless article based on it, thinking they've made the scoop of the century. Wow, flying cars!
Moller was the penny stock I enjoyed the most. I got caught up in the same speech he made several years ago and bought some stock in his company for around a buck each. Then everyone sobered up and realized he was just kidding. The stock price plummeted within a few months. I kept my cool and waited for him to goose the stock again with another grand claim. Eventually he did and I found a greater fool to take the stock off my hands. Hopefully the last round of suckers are lucky like me and get their money out after this last bump. Still I got a nice matchbox car out of it and it was fun for a few months to think he could actually make good on his extravagant boasts.
Yes, but this could be the last iteration, because those Russian oligarchs are not the sort to take being fleeced for $5Million wita a great deal of humor. It wouldn't shock me if Moller ends up dead or disappeared when this fails to live up to its hype.