Every time Paul Moller gets stuck in a traffic jam, his blood boils as he frets at the wasted time. Unlike most motorists resigned to their fate, Moller is doing something about what is an everyday bugbear in the world's increasingly gridlocked cities.
The elderly Canadian, who has relocated to California, has been toiling for well over 40 years on his dream of a flying car.
"I've been working probably eight hours a day, including weekends, since 1963 on this project," Moller told North America's Car & Driver magazine recently.
Moller claims to be close to a breakthrough on technology which would revolutionize personal transportation - a computer-guided car just as much at home in the air as it is on roads.
Despite numerous setbacks, the engineer remains steadfast to a vision which seems like something out of a science-fiction movie.
Moller claims to have invested more than 100 million dollars in value in the project. After various prototypes the fibreglass M400 Skycar is the latest incarnation of "Concept Volantor" - the word comes from the French volant, which means "flying."
The engineer says the car has flown for short distances and he would feel safe to venture farther afield. The Skycar has however yet to be put through its paces by independent engineers.
The Skycar has morphed into a compact "vertical take-off and landing" machine which could theoretically lift off from any suburban driveway. It uses a Wankel-type rotary engine to generate the thrust needed to stay aloft.
For his huge investment, Moller does not have much more to show than a run-down production shed near Sacramento and a few spectacular if dusty prototypes hanging on steel ropes from the ceiling.
Pioneers like Moller are not easily deterred. Whether in Europe or the United States, many boffins are busy chasing the quixotic dream.
In the village of Bissendorf in Germany's Lower Saxony state, Michael Werner has been working on his "baby" for some 10 years.
His company Fresh Breeze employs 20 staff and says it is poised to enter the market with a flying car. The low-slung vehicle looks like a cross between a trike and a Florida Everglades swamp-boat.
It has a 150-horsepower, rear-mounted engine driving either the rear axle or a large propeller. As soon as the driver accelerates and switches to flight mode, a paragliding sail is deployed and the 300-kilogram two-seater gets airborne.
Werner has already taken his machine for a spin in the air and when he ventures out on roads, his flying car carries red temporary number-plates.
A flying car from Slovakia is capable of taking to the skies too. The start-up run by designer Stefan Klein, who used to work for Audi and BMW, is working on a retail version of its Aeromobil which uses small wings for changing the direction of flight and a steering system that can be used for both driving and flying.
The Aeromobil is made of carbon-fibre and has a set of foldable wings. Top speed on the blacktop is given as 160 kilometres per hour. Once aloft, the car cum plane can manage up to 200 km/h and cover 700 kilometres without having to land en route.
The firm hopes to offer the flying car as a fun and lifestyle vehicle with a price tag of around 70 000 euros (73,700 dollars).
The Terrafugia Transition is a similar kind of machine and the brainchild of scientists who hail from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. They have constructed a kind of light plane which is also road-legal.
The wings can be folded up or down in 45 seconds so that it can be driven about like a car.
"That's all the time it takes for the hydraulics to get the wings in place so that the driver turns into a pilot and can fly off at up to 160 kilometres an hour," said co-founder Carl Dietrich.
These machines are significantly different from Moller's concept.
"We didn't set out to build a car which can fly, but rather a plane which you can take for a decent drive on the road," said Dietrich.
What sounds like hair-splitting is fundamental, since Dietrich accepts that the Transition will need an airport in order to take off and land and that its flights are governed by established air traffic control procedures.
"We are not doing this to improve everyday life for commuters," said Dietrich. "This is aimed at the many private pilots in the US who have been losing a lot of time on the ground which they would then gain in the air."
Their ideas have carried them a lot further than Moller has gone. Terrafugia has secured a blessing from the US aviation authorities.
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