Innovations are coming... or not
11/06/2021
A car that can fly already existed over 70 years ago. The Convair really did fly, even though a prototype crashed. The wing had its own engine and could be docked, the car had its own drive. And the Convair was by no means the only flying car; after all, another attempt was even seen in a James Bond film ("The Man with the Golden Gun").
Around five years ago, Airbus showed a car capable of flying, and the aircraft manufacturer is by no means the only manufacturer to keep coming up with prototypes. But even many decades after the first attempts, everything still seems to be a dream of the future.
It was hardly any different for the nuclear car. After all, the Ford solution dates back to 1957/1958 and other nuclear-powered vehicles have also been shown here and there without ever even coming close to series production. It was already imagined how one would drive for years without "refueling".
Can we learn anything for the present from these examples? Yes, perhaps that some inventions do take a little longer. The electric car, for example, took around 100 years to finally catch on (?). And the self-driving vehicle, which already existed in the drawings of visionaries in the 1960s, will probably not be marketable in the next two or three years.
However, we should not forget that many innovations did eventually make it to market, such as the anti-lock braking system (ABS) or the airbag. However, hardly anyone would have dared to think of "torque vectoring" 100 years ago, and yet today it is available in fast sports cars ...
