Science Fiction films like Back the the Future 2 and others have all introduced to the concept of hover cars. Cars that fly around or float rather then being planted firmly on the ground by four wheels. But lets not confuse these things with airplanes and helicopters. Aside from the “cool factor” of what it would be like to have one there are a lot of very rational reasons they would be better then the cars we use today.

First things first a hover car cannot be an airplane or a helicopter. This would make the world a very dangerous place. Especailly with the way most people drive. They have a hard enough time dealing with a vehical that goes left and right, forward and backwards then to also add a third dimension of up and down to that. For that reason hover cars need to remain two dimensional in their movement.

So what does that mean exactly? Well it means tradition roads still apply. At least to an extent. There always needs to be a sense of order.

The best way for this to happen is to just let the cars float say a half meter off the ground or a little lower without going any higher. That way people can’t fly off in any direction they want.

Ok so that that we’ve established the rules what are the benefits of such floating vehicals? Here are a few.

• Smoother ride – you are floating on air
• Better traction – ice, snow, wet roads, doesn’t matter you’re not touching them.
• Less road construction. Lets face it you reall don’t need the road. You’re just using it as a guide. So if the road has huge pot holes it doesn’t affect your driving the way it does now.

Future versions of these cars could have electronic guides in the windsheilds that would allow you to navigate across large grass fields as if they were highways. So instead of seeing vast fields of concrete you’d see something more pleasant, grass. Of course that would mean a lot of people cutting that grass. Heck if build right you could drive accross the ocean to another country. Which brings us into the downside of the technology.

You can’t likely have people driving across the ocean although in a perfect world nothing would be wrong with that. You’d have major prolems with patroling borders that way. The coast guard would definitely have a much larger role to play.

Another downside would be power issues. Unlike a car that can just roll to a stop when it runs out of gas a hover car would crash into the ground causing damage to the vehical and the people inside. Even if it were only flaoting a half meter off the ground. So unless these things were able to float with or without power a means of gliding to a landing would need to be found.

Now this technology doesn’t currently exist of course. But there is no doubt that one day we wil be dealing with it. Technology is constantly evolving and this is natural evolution of our current automobiles.