Since it’s conception since the 1960’s, Flying Cars have captivated the imagination of the public, with high prospects of the future, and the efficiency of everything, popularized by TV Shows like the Jetsons. However, if you really think about it, the idea of Flying cars is a really bad idea, and it gets even worse the longer you think about it.

First, because the technology is new, it will cost a lot for a long time. On top of that, because this technology has been dreamed about by nearly everyone since the 50’s, the demand would go through the roof, and so would the price. It might be a few decades before the price goes down, because of such high demand, and the tech being so new. On top of that, once the car was bought, it would need to be taken off on a runway. Although you might point out that it could just hover, only a few planes have that technology, and helicopters use the propellers to do that, but it’s hard to just slap on a propeller, and the right place to put it. So, we will need runways. However, it costs a lot of money to build runways, and there is not a lot of places to just place a runway. Cars can’t use the airport, because most people don’t know how to talk to the tower, and it would be run over by a Boeing 777 within three minutes. So, we have to build runways for the cars, and we have to build them everywhere, which would cost ungodly amounts of money that people just don’t have. Maybe, people would start to catch on, and make it stop, but not after we spent millions of dollars on nothing!

Lets say we got that out of the way, and the cars are in the air. However, the cars would have to follow certain airways, because then it would be total chaos, as cars would crash into each other all the time. The car crash would then either explode the car, or send all the people fall out from 30,000 feet in the air, while it is in the negatives. Putting it simply, you are dead. So, we have to put all the cars on airways. However, the cars will be taking off from areas without said airways, so hundreds of new airways will have to be made for all of those cars. On top of that, because there are so many cars, there will be constant traffic jams in the air, like on the ground, to the point that, if one wanted to go from Washington DC to New York, the ground cars would be faster, because all the other cars are honking their horns, and cursing at the dude ahead of them on the skies above. This would also affect the air industry, because all the airways are taken by the cars, so there would be hundreds of cases of airplanes accidently ramming cars. And there would still probably be car crashes, killing even more people.

On top of that, there is the problem of fuel. On average, most cars have a 500 mile gas range, so they can go that distance on a fuel tank in one go, without refueling. However, if someone in the air has to fill up the gas tank, they can’t because there is no gas stations in the air, so they have to land at the nearest runway, which might be far away, especially over the ocean or rural areas. On top of that, a big portion of the fuel would go to making sure that the car doesn’t fall out of the sky. So, in order to deal with that, you either need a lower range, which would mean more runways are needed which would add a few million more the cost, or make the gas tank bigger, which could potentially outweigh the car, and make it get fall from the sky. On top of that, that would also be even more inefficient, because you would lose a bunch of fuel trying to keep the car up just to drop your kid off at school.

Then there is the case of international flying. Because cars can only head on land, the proponents of flying cars say that flying cars will make international travel easier and more accessible. However, heading back to the fuel problem, cars don’t have enough fuel to go over 500 miles in one go, let alone across an entire ocean! On top of that, when just traversing countries, it will be nearly impossible to enforce border control, as there are so many runways, and the cars could land on any one of them, so anybody can come in, including criminals, who would reign free because there is no passport check.

Another major problem with flying cars is that lots of these cars would fly over urban areas. That would mean that, when someone looks at the radar, and sees a unidentified aircraft flying around, let’s say the White House, they will then ask for identification. Now, probably most Billy Bob’s and John Doe’s don’t have their radio connected to the air traffic control, let alone know how to identify themselves to the ATC. So, they would be a potential threat, and would be shot down by fighter pilots. As it turns out, it would probably be to late for everyone to realize it was just a parent taking his kids on the White House tour.

Finally, when flying for long distances, there will always be that one kid that has to go to the bathroom. While this would be fine on the road, just stop at a gas station, or on a plane, with the bathroom there, so the kid can do their thing for a few minutes. However, in a flying car, there is no bathroom in the sky, so the kid either has to hold it for a really long time, or you have to turn around and land on the nearest runway, which could be far away if you are flying internationally, like over the ocean.

So, while flying cars may seem as a great advancement in technology at first, it is in reality a horrible mistake. From problems such as inefficiency to crashes to the kid going to the bathroom, we need better future sources of transportation than this garbage, like the Hyperloop.