Flying car completes test flight between airports

Re:Flying car completes test flight between airports by afgasgbui on Wednesday June 30, 2021 @10:25AM (#27688947)

I was talking about fuel consumption. Most small aircraft run on normal gasoline, but they usually get the equivalent of 10-15 mpg. The Cessna 172, for instance, gets the equivalent of 13 miles per gallon. This vehicle will be worse than that.

I can see why that would be unclear from what I wrote.

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Re:Flying car completes test flight between airports by JoeAltmaier on Wednesday June 30, 2021 @11:33AM (#27689782)

"Its creator, Prof Stefan Klein, said it could fly about 1,000km (600 miles), at a height of 8,200ft (2,500m), and had clocked up 40 hours in the air so far."

That sounds like pretty good mileage? Depending on the size of the tank, 1000km is pretty good range for an automobile.

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Re:Flying car completes test flight between airports by afgasgbui on Wednesday June 30, 2021 @11:39AM (#27689831)

I guarantee you the tank is yuge compared to what you'd find in a normal car. All airplanes have big tanks.

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Re:Flying car completes test flight between airports by JoeAltmaier on Wednesday June 30, 2021 @01:58PM (#27691571)

Well no way will a 12,000 gallon tank fit in the car pictured. That's the size of a semi truck trailer.

So to cruise 1000km it has to get way better than 12kpg or whatever.

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Re:Flying car completes test flight between airports by rasz on Wednesday June 30, 2021 @10:48AM (#27689211)

Something tells me modern BMW engine will be more efficient than 80 year old design powering that Cessna.

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Re:Flying car completes test flight between airports by afgasgbui on Wednesday June 30, 2021 @11:16AM (#27689570)

The world records for efficiency are here:

https://www.fai.org/records?f%5B0%5D=field_type_of_record%3A...

The world record for the 1000-1750kg weight class is about 16 miles per gallon. That is burning jet fuel rather than ordinary gasoline. 1000 kg is light for a modern car.

There are no aircraft that can compete with a Prius for transporting small numbers of people. There are few that can compete with a Hummer.

(Note that I'm not sure how the records are calculated. There are a lot of relevant variables, most importantly how fast the plane is flying. And I'm not an aeronautical engineer, just a hobbyist.)

EDIT: More information on that record can be found here: https://lift.erau.edu/for-the-record/

I get a slightly different figure of 17-ish mpg. Still pretty bad.

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