Will Flying Cars Increase The Demand For Temporary Hangars?

In the pantheon of huge temporary structures, hangars are particularly fascinating in part because they have the potential to be used for a wide range of purposes despite being somewhat specific in scope.

Whilst primarily intended to store the giant wingspans of aircraft, hangars have been used to store cars, to serve as temporary workshops, garages, storage facilities and even film studios, benefiting from the inherent and necessary height and space.

However, one technological advance that could potentially not only change the world of transportation but boost the demand for hangers both permanent and temporary is the potential wide availability of the flying car.

Whilst the concept has been imagined for centuries, it has only been in the past year that a flying car model has received limited approval to be tested in preparation for a potential wide release in 2025.

If this flying car sees a wide release and ends up becoming widely popular, this could change a lot of the ways in which people live, as well as the infrastructure that would be needed.

Specifically, the rise of the flying car could spur a major boom in the production of aircraft hangers, particularly heavy-duty, affordable and temporary ones that can be used when a conventional garage is not suitable.

Why Has It Taken So Long?

The flying car has become something of a futurist punchline, often used to describe other ambitious technologies that come close to production and revolutionising the way we live but ultimately fall short.

From a technological perspective, making an aircraft that can travel on the road has been achieved as early as 1935, but the problem has been ensuring that such a machine is feasible for use by people who do not own an aircraft.

This means that they need to be affordable to buy and to run, environmentally conscious, easily driven on the road and easy to fly even for pilots who are not fully qualified.

They also need to easily and safely transition between road and air, which can be as simple as having foldable wings that can be easily set up, or another lift system that can be fitted to the flying car and easily used.

There needs to be infrastructure in place to take off, land and park a flying car safely. A typical garage and drive are not large enough for flight so a hangar, albeit not a full-size one, and either a runway strip or a suitably flat piece of land was typically required.

Some flying vehicles, including the Alef Model A, feature a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) system that allows them to take flight and land without the need for a runway.

It also needs to pass twice the number of regulatory tests as a car or an aircraft, which can be particularly difficult as an aircraft needs to be light and aerodynamic, two qualities that make it less safe on the road. It is also unclear, legally, when the flying car changes from being a ground vehicle to an aircraft.

However, once the first vehicle to prove the viability of flying cars launches, it would become a matter of time for the infrastructure and economies of scale to catch up.