Terrafugia is not just a new child company just reaching the market and expecting to revolutionize. They’ve been there since 2006, and they are one step closer to providing the personal flying vehicle that will fit inside a regular home garage. According to Terrafugia’s description, the TF-X should be the easy to handle, lightweight, fast and comfortable flying car.
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TF-X has a lot of goals to check before being released, both in terms of safety and performance. For example, TF-X should be designed to be easy to maneuver, taking no more than 5 hours for a regular driver to get familiarized with controls and be able to drive and fly the machine safely. One should be able to steer TF-X just like a car and switch between manual and automatic flight modes between landing zones. On the security section, there’s even more that needs to be accomplished. According to Terrafugia, TF-X will automatically avoid bad weather, other aircraft and restricted airspaces such as tower-controlled ones and military airspaces.
Other safety measures include a backup parachute that should support the entire vehicle, that can be activated by the operator if the machine gives signs of autolanding failure. ce emergency is declared by the operator, TF-X will land also in unapproved zones, and authorities will be alerted. Emergency auto-land at the nearest safe zone will be automatically engaged if the operator becomes unresponsive. On the comfort side, TF-X will be able to accommodate 4 people and fly continuously for about 500 miles. It should also fit inside a regular home garage and be able to drive on open road without any constraints. When its time to fly, TF-X will do a vertical take-off using two propellers powered by a 1MW electric engine.
So far, we can only peek at a computer generated simulation; even though there’s still lots of work before you will actually be able to use the TF-X, the wait is definitely worth.
