<story><title>The Pal-V flying car</title><url>http://pal-v.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vibrunazo</author><text>Self driving cars first. Flying cars second. In that order, cannot happen the other way around. I agree with Erick Schmidt when he said &quot;It&apos;s a bug that cars were invented before computers, or else humans would have never driven cars themselves&quot;. Hopefully we won&apos;t implement the same bug again.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mvzink</author><text>Prescriptively, I agree. But descriptively, the economy isn&apos;t rational, and I bet we will implement that bug again: arguably the most essential and accurate message on that page is &quot;ultimate freedom&quot;—flying cars, and normal cars, and planes have rarely been motivated by the goal of efficient or safe transportation. Practical, rational people ride the train (or the bus) and rowdy kids whose prefrontal cortex still hasn&apos;t fully developed love their off roaders and street racers. As far as the &quot;spirit of driving&quot; goes, letting your car (or flying car or plane) drive (or fly) itself is tantamount to putting it on tracks. This website, their product, and the marketing all indicate that the motivation is purely irrational: the perennial lust for freedom, not for practical transportation.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Pal-V flying car</title><url>http://pal-v.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vibrunazo</author><text>Self driving cars first. Flying cars second. In that order, cannot happen the other way around. I agree with Erick Schmidt when he said &quot;It&apos;s a bug that cars were invented before computers, or else humans would have never driven cars themselves&quot;. Hopefully we won&apos;t implement the same bug again.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dwhly</author><text>What kind of nonsense is this?  As a pilot (of both land and air vehicles) your sentiments seem completely irrational.  Define &quot;flying car&quot;!  There are tons of entrants in this category, and many that are fully functional.  I can&apos;t say that I find them practical, or myself a potential early customer-- but not because of some misplaced sense that we need computers to handle the piloting for us.&lt;p&gt;And what of Eric&apos;s quote?  Sounds like someone who&apos;s busy building a self-driving car-- not someone who loves the beauty of being a pilot!&lt;p&gt;Are we to cede all functions that we used to master to computers?  Really?&lt;p&gt;Give me a break.</text></comment>