By Annie Lowrey|Posted Wednesday, March 9, 2011, at 4:29 PM ET
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a … Volkswagen with wings? A robotic duck? A character in a Pixar film? No. In the words of its inventors, it is a “roadable aircraft.” In the terminology of our collective imagination, it is a flying car. And maybe it is coming to a garage, street, highway, airstrip, or sky near you.
The company that makes the vehicle, Terrafugia—Latin for “flee the Earth”—is a small firm based in Woburn, Mass., made up almost entirely of engineers. It says it has scores of orders for the light two-person plane it calls the Transition, and plans to start production in the next year. The idea for the company and the aircraft came to Carl Dietrich, one of Terrafugia’s cofounders, while he was completing his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was, of all things, a regulatory change that sparked his imagination. In 2004, the Federal Aviation Administration created a new category of plane, light-sport aircraft. The small planes require only 20 hours of flight time for pilot certification, less time than it takes to get a beautician’s license in some states. Dietrich, already an indefatigable inventor, started toying with the idea of producing a flying car that enthusiasts and businesspeople could take on short trips—300 miles, say, a full day’s car trip but a quick flight—and then drive and keep at home.
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