Carbon Fiber in Flying Cars

1. Carbon Fiber and the Flying Car Debate Thoughts of flying cars filling the skies have captured our collective imagination for as long as we can remember. With so much technological advancement all around us, it's a wonder the flying car still proves to be so elusive. Yet a growing number of companies are now racing to see who will produce the first commercially viable air taxi. This has created a debate over the role of carbon fiber in flying cars. Wired's Eric Adams wrote a post in late January 2019 explaining his position that carbon fiber is holding back the development of flying cars. He wrote a very compelling piece that clearly demonstrates he has thought through his position. Composites World's Ginger Gardiner fired back with her own blog post several days later. She made a compelling case that not only is carbon fiber manufacturing not holding back flying cars, but it will actually be one of the main factors contributing to the success of air taxis in the near future. So which position is correct? Interestingly enough, both Adams and Gardiner miss a much bigger point. The one thing that could ground flying cars is the same thing that's causing big problems for driverless cars and trucks: a lack of infrastructure. Carbon Fiber is Ready to Go We agree with Gardiner's position that carbon fiber is ready to go. In her piece, she acknowledged some of the drawbacks of carbon fiber fabricating including the time and expense involved in manual layups. However, she also detailed that new processes, technologies, and materials are gradually eliminating all the concerns Adams wrote about in his piece. If the cost and production time associated with carbon fiber were the only things inhibiting flying cars, our money would be on Gardiner's position. Carbon fiber is already a primary building material in the aerospace industry and one more than capable of being the foundation of flying cars. Carbon fiber aerospace parts are admittedly expensive at the current time. But prices are dropping with the emergence of automation, robotics, and 3D printing. It is reasonable to expect an affordable and mostly composite flying car ready for mass production within the next 5 to 10 years. And that leads us back to the problem of infrastructure.

2. Keeping Cars in the Air Let's assume that five manufacturers could produce an affordable flying car today based in carbon fiber technology. Let's say a single car costs just $30,000. Do you think the general public would run out and buy them en masse? Probably not. And if they did, they would create air traffic issues similar to what was observed on the streets of America's major cities when Ford introduced the Model T. The fact of the matter is that we do not have the infrastructure in place to support flying cars as mainstream transportation. Even if we were to begin building that infrastructure today, it would take decades to complete. That's the same reason driverless cars and trucks are not likely to be reality any time soon. Keeping flying cars safe is about a lot more than making them light enough to stay airborne with a reasonably sized motor and wings. Infrastructure is also required to keep legions of flying cars from running into each other. After all, there's no pavement, signals, or stop signs in the sky. People will debate whether or not carbon fiber is up to the task of supporting an industry devoted to producing flying cars. The bigger issue is infrastructure. Carbon fiber is already there as a primary building material. The infrastructure is a long way from being there.