Elon Musk has mocked the concept of flying cars, saying that other drivers could worry that the vehicles would “guillotine” them while they’re flying overhead.
Musk’s comments came following the inaugural flying car conference, held by Uber earlier this week. During the conference, Uber predicted that it would be testing out commuter aircraft by 2020, a bold prediction and one that didn’t fly over the head (pun intended) of the Tesla CEO.
During Musk’s TED 2017 conference interview in Vancouver, the entrepreneur told interviewer Chris Anderson that he was “in favor of flying things,” though he wasn’t exactly on board with flying cars. “There is a challenge with flying cars in that they’ll be quite noisy, the wind-force generated will be very high,” he said. “Let’s just say that if something’s flying over your head, if there are a whole bunch of flying cars all over the place, that is not an anxiety-reducing situation.”
“You don’t think to yourself, ‘well, I feel better about today,’” he continued. “You’re thinking, ‘did they service their hubcap? Or is it going to come off and guillotine me as they’re flying past?’”
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Musk is no stranger to making bold predictions, with him previously having claimed that SpaceX, the company he founded, will have launched a manned mission to Mars by the year 2022. While Uber’s flying cars seems less ambitious by comparison, Musk has a history of following up on his claims, whereas the logistics of introducing flying cars to the public in any meaningful capacity seems optimistic.
Uber claimed that its flying cars would first launch in Texas and Dubai, with the vehicles — which haven’t yet been manufactured — capable of flying 100 miles in just 40 minutes, along with being able to take off vertically negating the need for dedicated runways. The company estimated it would need 1,000 aircraft, 83 vertiports and 12 charging spots in each in order to serve up to four cities.
(H/T Inverse)
