Now That's a Hybrid

Check out these half-car, half-plane "hybrid crafts." The one above is called the Transition and is being developed by a company called Terrafugia. According to an article in 60 Second Science:

On March 5, the Transition took off on its maiden flight from Plattsburgh International Airport in upstate New York. Though the test craft only reached about 100 feet (30 meters) and stayed aloft less than 40 seconds, the successful flight lets Terrafugia move forward with making a full prototype to test next summer.

“The story here is that this is real,” says retired Air Force Colonel Phil Meteer, chief test pilot for Terrafugia, a former fighter pilot who has now added a flying car to his roster of flown vehicles. “The concept of flying cars has come a long way from when I doodled them as a kid.”

The vehicle below is the Parajet Skycar, which is a 'hybrid-hybrid', as it runs on biofuels. According to the website:

Whether you are searching for environmentally friendly practical transport or new thrills the Parajet Skycar is no longer a dream….... a machine that can drive like a car and fly like an aeroplane, capable of beating congestion for the commuter or providing a low cost method of reaching remote regions only accessible by helicopter.

We are currently building the world’s first flying Parajet Skycar and after rigorous testing will travel from London across the Sahara to Tombouctou for the maiden voyage in Spring 2009. It will be the first high performance, road legal, carbon neutral flying car capable of providing sports and rally car performance on or off the road and light aircraft performance after just a few minutes of wing preparation.

Pretty cool, huh?