Some things in Society Tend to Take Time to Happen. It was 56 years ago that the Jetsons envisioned flying cars. Now, we may be finally getting them.

Look up! A dozen 'air taxi' flying cars are readying for takeoff

Well, it may have been 56 years since "The Jetsons" was first on TV, but flying cars are finally about to become real. The last few months have been filled with news of companies that unveiled, demonstrated, or released videos of their "air taxis," as they're often called.

 From article, (Well, it may have been 56 years since “The Jetsons” was first on TV, but flying cars are finally about to become real.

The last few months have been filled with news of companies that unveiled, demonstrated, or released videos of their “air taxis,” as they’re often called. They’re basically giant-sized versions of drones — giant enough to carry a person, or two, or five.

Why now? Because all the necessary ingredients have aligned: Batteries with high enough energy density to carry these copters into the air; composite materials like carbon fiber light enough to work; avionics (aircraft software and electronics, developed for regular drones) cheap and reliable enough to adapt; and collision-avoidance systems advanced enough to keep these things from crashing.

The beauty of these personal copters is that since they’re all electric, they’re really quiet. They could fly at low altitude without becoming a nuisance to people on the ground. And, of course, they’re pollution-free: zero emissions.

All of these models can be autonomous. You plug in your destination, and the thing flies you there. Some have a joystick so that you can seize control of it if you want, and most can also be remote controlled.

These air taxis are built with redundancies of the major elements, so even if something goes wrong, you won’t drop out of the air. Many have low-altitude parachutes, too.

Now, don’t get all excited. You can’t buy a passenger drone yet — that moment will probably come in 2020 at the earliest, and they’ll cost hundreds of thousands apiece. Even then, nothing will happen in the U.S. until the Federal Aviation Administration comes up with rules to govern how these things use the airspace.

Oh, and by the way: Even with all the advances in batteries and materials, these things are still super limited in flight time. You’re lucky to get 20 minutes in the air.

But the trend is unmistakable: A lot of companies have working prototypes that are taking real people on real flights. [Click on the For More Info link for a list of companies and summary of their prototypes.])

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