A plane you can drive Anna Mracek Dietrich
what is it about flying cars we’ve
wanted to do this for about a hundred
years and there are historic attempts
that have had some level of technical
success but we haven’t yet gotten to the
point where on your way here this
morning you see something that really
truly seeing lessly integrates the
two-dimensional world that were
comfortable in with the
three-dimensional sky above us that I
don’t know about you but I really enjoy
spending time in we looked at the
historical attempts that had been out
there and realized that despite the fact
that we have a lot of modern innovations
to draw on today that weren’t available
previously we have modern composite
materials we have aircraft engines that
get good fuel economy and have better
power-to-weight ratios that have ever
been available we have glass cockpit
avionics that bring the information you
need to fly directly to you in the
cockpit but without fundamentally
addressing the problem from a different
perspective we realized that we were
going to be getting the same result that
people had been getting for the last
hundred years which isn’t where we want
to be right now so instead of trying to
make a car that can fly we decided to
try to make a plane that could drive and
the result is the Terrafugia transition
it’s a two-seat single-engine airplane
that works just like any other smaller
plane you take off and land at a local
airport then once you’re on the ground
you fold up the wings drive it home park
it in your garage and it works after two
years of an iterative design and
construction process the
proof-of-concept made its public debut
in 2008 now like with anything that’s
really different from the status quo it
didn’t always go so well testing that
aircraft and we discovered that it’s a
very good thing that when you go home
with something that’s been broken you’ve
actually learned a lot more than when
you managed to tick off all of your test
objectives the first time through so we
very much wanted to see the aircraft
that we’d all helped build in the air
off the ground like it was supposed to
be and on our third high-speed testing
deployment on a bitter cold morning in
upstate New York we got to do that for
the
first time the picture behind me was
stopped by the copilot in our chase
aircraft just moments after the wheels
got off the ground for the first time
and we were all very flattered to see
that image become a symbol of
accomplishing something that people had
thought was impossible really the world
over the flight testing that followed
that was as basic and low-risk as we
could make it but it still accomplished
what we needed to to take the program to
the next step and to gain the
credibility that we needed within our
eventual market the general aviation
community and with the regulator’s that
govern the use and design of aircraft is
particularly in the States
the FAA about a year ago gave us an
exemption for the transition till allow
us to have an additional 110 pounds
within the light sport aircraft category
now that doesn’t sound like a lot but
it’s very important because being able
to deliver the transition as a
light-sport aircraft makes it simpler
for us to certify it but it also makes
it much easier for you to learn how to
fly it
a sport pilot can be certificated in as
little as 20 hours of flight time and at
110 pounds that’s very important for
solving the other side of the equation
driving it turns out that driving with
its associated design implementation and
regulatory hurdles is actually a harder
problem to solve than flying for those
of us that spend most of our lives on
the ground this may be counterintuitive
but driving has potholes cobblestones
pedestrians other drivers and a rather
long and detailed list of federal motor
vehicle safety standards to contend with
fortunately necessity remains the mother
of invention and a lot of the design
work that were the most proud of with
the aircraft came out of solving the
unique problems of operating it on the
ground everything from a continuously
variable transmission and liquid based
cooling system that allows us to use an
aircraft engine and stop and go traffic
to a custom-designed gearbox that power
is either the propeller when you’re
flying or the wheels on the ground to
the automated wing folding mechanism
that we’ll see in a moment - crash
safety features we have a carbon fiber
safety cage that protects the occupants
for less than 10 percent of the weight
of a traditional steel chassis in a car
now this also as good as it is wasn’t
quite enough the regulations for
vehicles on the road were
written with an airplane in mind so we
did need a little bit of support from
the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration you may have seen in the
news recently they came through with us
at the end of last month with a few
special exemptions that will allow the
transition to be sold in the same
category as SUVs and light trucks as a
multi-purpose passenger vehicle it is
now officially quote designed for
occasional off-road use now let’s see it
in action you can see there the wings
folded up just along the side of the
plane
you’re not powering the propeller you’re
powering the wheels
and it is under 7 feet tall so it will
fit in a standard construction garage
and that’s the automated wing folding
mechanism that’s real time you just push
a few buttons in the cockpit and the
wings come out once they’re fully
deployed there’s a mechanical lock that
goes into place
again from inside the cockpit and
they’re now fully capable of handling
any of the loads that you would see in a
flight just like putting on your
convertible top and you’re all thinking
what your neighbors would think of
seeing that right until the vehicle
flies you know 75% of your risk is that
first one
we were all exceedingly excited about
that little bunny hop and our test pilot
gave us the best feedback that you can
get from a test pilot after a first
flight which was that it was remarkably
unremarkable he would go on to tell us
that the transition had been the easiest
airplane to land that he’d flown in his
entire 30-year career as a test pilot
so despite making something that is
seemingly revolutionary we really focus
on doing as little knew as possible we
leverage a lot of Technology from the
state of the art in general aviation and
from automotive racing when we do have
to do something truly out-of-the-box we
use an incremental design build test
redesign cycle that lets us reduce risk
and baby steps now since we started
Terrafugia about six years ago we’ve had
a lot of those baby steps we’ve gone
from being three of us working in the
basement at MIT while we were still in
graduate school to about two dozen of us
working in an initial production
facility outside of Boston we’ve had to
overcome challenges like keeping the
weight below the lights for at limits
that I talked about figuring out how to
politely respond when a regulator tells
you but that won’t fit through a
tollbooth with the wings extended to all
of the other associated durability and
engineering issues that we talked about
on the ground still if everything goes
to our satisfaction with the testing and
construction of the the to production
prototypes that we’re working on right
now those first deliveries to are about
a hundred people that have reserved an
airplane at this point should begin at
the end of next year the transition will
cost in line with other small airplanes
and I’m certainly not out to replace
your Chevy but I do think that the
transition should be your next airplane
here’s why while nearly all of the
commercial air travel in the world goes
through a relatively small number of
large hub airports there is a huge
underutilized resource out there there
are thousands of local air strips that
don’t seem nearly as many aircraft
operations a day as they could on
average there’s one Duke within 20 to 30
miles of wherever you are in the United
States the transition gives you a safer
more convenient and more fun way of
using this resource for those of you who
aren’t yet pilots there’s four main
reasons why those of us who are don’t
fly as much as we’d like to there
whether primarily cost long door-to-door
travel time eye mobility your
destination
now bad weather comes in just land fold
up the wings drive home it doesn’t
matter if it rains a little you have a
windshield wiper instead of paying to
keep your airplane and a hangar parking
in your garage and the unleaded
automotive fuel that
we use is both cheaper and better for
the environment than traditional lab gas
door-to-door travel time is reduced
because now instead of lugging bags
finding a parking space taking off your
shoes or pulling your plane out of the
hangar you’re now just spending that
time getting to where you want to go and
mobility at your destination is clearly
solved just fold up the wings and keep
going the transition simultaneously
expands our horizons while making the
world a smaller more accessible place it
also continues to be a fabulous
adventure I hope that you’ll need to
take a moment to think about how you
could use something like this to give
yourself more access to your own world
and to make your own travel more
convenient and more fun thank you for
giving me the opportunity to share it
with you