Flying car cleared for the road

Terrafugia's Transition roadable aircraft, shown here in an artists' rendering, has cleared regulatory hurdles that make it street legal.

By John Roach

A flying car is being exempted from regulatory hurdles, meaning future owners of the vehicle will be able to drive it on public streets, the company behind it recently announced.

What this means is that you'll be able to legally sit in traffic with the rest of the street-legal cars, but have a slight grin as you head home from the general aviation airport where you landed after flying over traffic for the first 20 miles of your commute.

"Think of it as an airplane that drives, not a car that flies," Anna Mracek Dietrich, the chief operating officer of Terrafugia, the Woburn, Mass.,-based company that is making the Transition roadable aircraft, told me in an email Thursday.

"Once on the ground, the pilot can fold the wings on his Transition with the push of a button, drive home, and park in their garage." Article and links here