Terrafugia flying car gets airbags

A new design of the Terrafugia Transition ‘roadable aircraft’ (that’s ‘flying car’ to you and me) was unveiled together at the AirVenture show at OshKosh. The new car has gained 50kg in weight to accommodate road safety features including a safety cage, crumple zone and airbags.

If you stack the 30mpg vehicle into another car on the road, you’ll now have a much better chance of walking away from the wreckage. Strangely enough, the Transition has always been one of the safest aircraft in the skies, boasting a whole-plane parachute in the very unlikely event of the 100hp rear propeller malfunctioning.

There have been changes inside, too. You still get that disconcerting combination of a steering wheel, accelerator, brake, joystick and flap controls, but now there’s a touchscreen display that offers different data depending on whether you’re in flight or drive modes.

Terrafugia is accepting $10,000 (£6,500) down payments to reserve a Transition for its expected 2011 delivery.

Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home