'Back to the Future' Flying Cars Almost a Reality

Photo Credit: Terrafugia

On Oct. 21, 2015, Marty McFly’s and Doc Brown’s DeLorean touched down 30 years in the future, giving them a glimpse of an unrecognizable world in which the Cubs win the World Series, kids play on hoverboards and commuters soar their way to work in flying cars.

Now, that ”Back to the Future” Day has finally arrived, and while the Cubs are likely to bow out of the playoffs early, and kids are still rolling down the streets instead of floating above them, the prospect of soaring above the traffic instead of being stuck in it is close to reality, thanks to a Massachusetts company.

That dream of going from garage to the clouds could soon become a reality, according to a Woburn-based startup known as Terrafugia.

“We make flying cars,” Terrafugia says. The startup, managed by MIT graduates, has multiple models in which they’ve been crafting.

A few years back, company CEO Carl Dietrich and his co-workers shocked spectators at a Wisconsin convention with a light, gasoline-powered plane that was shaped like an SUV.

The prototype’s wings could fold in and it met legal highway driving requirements.

“Our first product is very much an airplane that can be driven,” Dietrich told the Associated Press, “but it’s putting our company in position to make a car that can fly.”

Terrafugia is hoping to bring its invention full-circle within the next few years. The company says it hopes to provide customers with a version by 2017, called the Transition. It will be priced at $279,000.

“We need a new industry that makes personal aviation safer, as simple as driving your car, and convenient for everyone. We need a practical flying car,” Terrafugia says on its website.