This is huge news for Moller and ilk. I know Moller's been working on the 'flying car' idea for what seems like forever now (having built working prototypes in the 60s or 70s), and from what I've seen, the Moller Skycar at least SEEMS to be the closest thing I've seen to a feasible product.
...what? Moller got sued halfway to China, is bankrupt, and never shipped, and this is not Moller's car, nor does it use anything approaching the same design, nor does it share the same goal.
Moller's car was about making flying as easy as driving; this is about having a car that can turn into a convention aircraft. Or, more specifically:
Moller's car was based on duct fans; this is a traditional propeller aircraft.
Moller's car couldn't drive on roads; this is explicitly designed to (and is the aspect that was just approved, if you read the article).
Moller's car was designed to eschew traditional flight controls in favor of a do-what-I-mean approach; this aircraft has a completely normal yoke/rudder/throttle setup, where the yoke doubles as a steering-wheel in car mode.
Maybe this is the idea of Moller, in some very abstract sense, but I think you could make an equally strong claim that it was Jules Verne's ideas realized--and he never pretended to be trying to ship something.
Actually, this isn't really related. This is an exemption for the Terrafugia vehicles to use different materials than those required for standard cars and still remain "street legal." The Moller Skycar has never been planned to be a street vehicle, it is strictly an air vehicle.
Moller is an investment scam. The Moller skycar is a pretty fiberglass shell he's been hawking to magazines and television news programs for forty years. I'm amazed anyone still falls for it.
I always thought this was cheating a bit -- it's just an extra-large PPG (powered paraglider) with a dune buggy attached instead of a trike. When I hear "flying car", I usually think of some type of fixed-wing aircraft.
