To fly his own Batmobile-type vehicle is every child’s dream, and that of several adults as well. Which of us hasn’t ever thought how wonderful it would be to be to just soar off the earth into the sky above, in our own little flying machine, without needing to book tickets, drive to an airport, take our shoes off and be frisked by suspicious-eyed security personnel? The more adventurous of us may have even tried to build our own wings, or air machines, or rockets.
Now, here’s someone who looks like he's very close to making that dream tangible and real. Not on paper, or even just a prototype, but by building a real car which you can park in your garage, drive on the highways and which can even sprout wings and convert itself, Batmobile style, into a flying machine.
Meet Carl Dietrich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) aerospace engineer, pilot, and now, inventor of the latest flying car. Dietrich’s company, Terrafugia (roughly translated from Latin as ‘to flee or escape the earth’), founded in 2006 by MIT aerospace engineering cohorts, passionate pilots all, currently has an order backlog of $25 million, which translates to roughly 100 aircraft being reserved. The first customer delivery is expected in 2012.
“We will be mass-producing this in five years,” Dietrich told Business Standard in an interview on the sidelines of the Goa Thinkfest, a Ted Talks-meets-literature-festival event promoted by Tehelka and Newsweek magazines. Dietrich came to India at the invitation of the organisers of this ‘conferestival’, and is very enthusiastic about the immense potential that his invention could have for a developing country like India.
“When we made the model and the prototype, we were targeting the US, which has over 5,000 unused and under-utilised airports. But when I think of the possibilities of this (invention) for countries which have an even less of a super-highway infrastructure in place, like Brazil, India and China, it is very exciting,” Dietrich says.
He’s found a similar statistic in India. He says India has around a 1,000 agricultural airports that are under-used. “Actually, all it needs is a one-kilometre long dirt strip as a designated area to land,” he says. “And, it doesn’t even have to be tarred — any smooth surface, even a grassy one, would do,” he says. This means even if that statistic turns out to be incorrect, it really wouldn't matter. As he points out, “It costs less to pave short runways than create lots of highways.”
Just like India leapfrogged straight into mobile telephony, bypassing huge investments in miles of landline cables, it is quite possible that it could use new technology, like Dietrich's flying car, especially to access rural areas still unconnected or less connected by roads, or for critical disaster relief, perhaps during floods or other natural disasters when some parts of roads are inacessible. Dietrich certainly agrees.
His wife, Anna Mracek Dietrich, co-founder and chief operating officer, Terrafugia, can’t resist saying, “I hope at least we’ve sown some seeds here...this, right now, is just putting ourselves out there, saying “hello world!” to this part of the planet,” she says.
Earlier in the day, Dietrich’s presentation laid out the history of how people have been trying to invent a machine which could circumscribe both land and air. “The earliest patent for such a machine was granted in 1917. A company called Aerocar Co had, in 1949, recorded deposits for 500 orders. It took them 20 minutes to decache the wings and open them,” he said, before screening a video of his roadable aircraft deploying its wings in 30 seconds and taking off. “I'm very encouraged by the sense of possibilities. This resonated with many people here,” Dietrich said.
For him, it all began with his “illogical love of the idea of free flight.” Dietrich says he began saving for his pilot's licence from the age of eight and secured it at the age of 17. As an aerospace engineer, he began to think the idea of personal aviation and dual-purpose vehicles wasn't all that unrealistic. “The US had thousands of public airports across the country, yet most flights take off from the 27 international airports.” So, with the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for Innovation he won in 2006, and an additional $10,000 prize money that his business plan won in a competition, he incorporated Terrafugia.
“We got seven deposits at our first public show,” he says. Actually, Terrafugia finally succeeded where so many had earlier failed because of its philosophy to design a vehicle for pilots who “bring additional ground capability to an airplane, instead of attempting to make a car fly,” the company website states.
He admits the cost is still a challenge in the US “and would be an even bigger challenge in India.” At $279,000, the transition to this next-generation personal transportation vehicle isn't exactly inexpensive. However, the possibilities such a vehicle generates are unimaginable.
“It’s a powerful idea — it captures people's imagination and helps them think outside the box,” he says. But its more than just a powerful idea. Dietrich believes his machine is a creatively disruptive product. Which means not only would it create space for itself; like with any other hi-tech product, with increasing demand, costs will come down as volumes go up.
“I would love it to have that sort of a revolutionary potential in an emerging market,” he says, emphasising this is the reason he finds the India story so interesting in a changing world. Such a product can have a much bigger impact here than in the US and actually bring about transformational change by providing real value, and not be reduced to a toy for the super-rich.
Amen to that!
