No flying car has ever found a market. Electric air taxis are next in line

Flying cars don't fail in flight. They die in the market. Electric air taxi developers are falling into the same trap

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The flying car has been one year away from mass production for about a century. Engineers have built prototypes, test pilots have flown them, and companies have taken deposits — and every time, the same combination of technical limits, regulatory costs, and thin markets ended the program before it reached scale.

Today's electric air taxi companies insist the current moment is different. To judge that claim, it helps to know exactly what happened before, because the failure wasn't random. It followed a pattern.

The technology worked well enough to generate headlines but not well enough to satisfy regulators. Compliance drove up prices beyond what customers would pay. Too few customers materialized, and the thin market scared off the capital needed for mass production. That sequence repeated itself from 1917 to 2023.

A century of attempts, a century of the same trap

Aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss designed the Autoplane, a triplane with an aluminum body, detachable wings, and seating for a pilot and two passengers. It was exhibited at the Pan-American Aeronautic Exposition in New York City in February 1917 and, as Scientific American reported, was intended to combine the luxury of a limousine with the freedom of an airplane. It managed a few short hops. The U.S.'s entry into World War I in April 1917 ended development before the vehicle could prove itself.

Two decades later, Waldo Waterman built the Arrowbile, a tailless, two-seat plane designed to be driven........

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