Somewhere, there must be a “Stories of the Future” news copy generator that cranks out the same techno-futuro, gee-whiz, Jimmy crap at regular intervals. This generator lives right next to the one that spits up the “dangers of the Internet” falderal. I think they’re programmed to work together, on odd and even months. This month, it’s a Gernsbackian fan favorite, the Moller Flying Car, in this case, their M200G model, a.k.a. the Flying Saucer.
Moller’s skycars have garnered tremendous amounts of ink and electrons (and oodles of magazine covers) for nearly four decades. And they’re always billed as coming to a blue sky near you, any day now. Dr. Paul Moller even got himself into some hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the ’90s when he suggested to investors that 10,000 of his skycars would be in the air by 2002. But according to this BBC piece, NOW is the time. It’s happening. Really. Forget all those other previous predictions. The M200G skycar will allegedly go on sale in a few months, and Moller plans on cranking out 250 in a year.
So, months away from production, eh? And yet, check out this video on their website. It shows an M200 still under tether and a very tentative, not very graceful flight (and a lot of nervous looking natives scurrying beneath it). This is the best they could come up with for trying to convince potential buyers to fork over between $90-450K? And could you possibly hone that price point down a little finer? Silly.
Is it just me, or are we ripe for another PaPeRo announcement from NEC? I can hear the story generator cranking out the breathless prose now…
A few days ago, I 
Ben Rollman,