Car News

It once seemed the stuff of science fiction dreams. Cars that could fly. Like something out of the classic time-travel movie, Back to the Future Part II. Flying cars.

But it’s increasingly looking like our daily commute will soon involve taking to the skies. Keep in mind, “soon” is around the 2030s, based on current predictions. But that’s only a decade and a bit away. Imagine going to work by stepping into a “motoring” machine that lifts off vertically, then flies almost like a helicopter does, and then sets you down by the office. Parking bays will certainly look interesting.

And helicopter is a good comparison as the “lift” that allows these cars to fly will be similar to how a helicopter works. Or, more accurately, how drones operate.

Theoretically, they’re already here.

The Terrafugia Transition is technically a flying car – it looks like a strange love child of a light aircraft and a futuristic mini-car. Mini-car because it requires a certain maximum weight for lift, and to adhere to the US’s federal light aircraft regulations.

It experienced its first flight on 5 March 2009 as a proof-of-concept vehicle and could travel on the road at about 100 km per hour. Flight speed? Around 187 km per hour. Not exactly a Boeing 747, but definitely a great way to by-pass heavy traffic, as between Johannesburg and Pretoria’s notoriously slow rush hour stretch.

The planned date for final customer production kept being extended as developments to the craft continued to be implemented. Its latest date was to have been July 2019, but as yet it still hasn’t been released to the general public.

But the latest developments are flying high. Flying car high.

Meet NEC Corp’s flying machine. It has propellers that allow it to lift off the ground. This picture, taken in Abiko, close to Tokyo, is essentially a large-scale drone that “flew” for approximately a minute.

It is large enough to carry passengers. It’ll be part of the automated vehicle range, which means you won’t need a pilot’s licence simply to get to work. It’ll handle the flying for you. If the thought of being flown by an automated vehicle through the friendly skies scares you, well, you have about 12 or so years to get used to the idea.

The Japanese government is fully behind this initiative, meaning potential legislative issues will be taken care of relatively quickly. According to the current plan of action, the country wants these things flying around cities by 2023 and transporting people a decade after that.

Japan is made up of four major islands (and a series of much smaller ones) but it has over 100 million people. As such, there’s a heavy congestion problem in the country’s cities. The belief is that by supporting flying car technology, this congestion will be relieved.

Currently, other countries that are interested in flying cars are Dubai, New Zealand, and Singapore.

One of the most prolific companies in the world, Uber, plans on taking to the skies sometime in the near future. Sadly, this means a lot of drivers in many countries will be put out of what can be quite a lucrative job.

But as happens with much innovative technology involving machine learning, the human element is no longer needed as much.

He’s our favourite imperialist agent: with a licence to thrill across the silver screen. And there are two things that generate excitement with every new Bond movie announcement. One: who will play the “Bond Girl” in this latest instalment. Two: what will feature as the Bond vehicle?

The latter is arguably more important. A dame is a dame, but a fine car is a true joy to ride. Of course, there have been many fine cars over the decades that span 007’s reign as spy supreme. We look at our three favourites.

Aston Martin DB5

Not many people know this, but Aston Martin didn’t even pay for product placement in their first appearance on the movie projector slide. In fact, the producers of Goldfinger had to bend over backwards to accommodate the automobile company. It was only after the massive success of the movie and the surging popularity of Aston Martin as a result that company executives started getting $ signs in their eyes at the thought of their products being placed in any movie deemed likely to be a box office smash.

Thus began the age of product placement. In any case, the Aston Martin DB5 is and always will be a classic. It began its movie career with a bang. Literally, if you consider how the Q Division of MI6 outfitted Bond’s car with all sorts of useful gadgets like machine guns. Since then, it’s featured in a number of Bond films, most memorably in Casino Royale, the more ‘realistic’ Bond movie where the car doesn’t have gadgets at all. But it does do seven spins in the air as Bond swerves out the way to avoid hitting a bound and gagged Vesper, laying on the road and set as a trap. The works, leading to one of the most intense ‘Bond captured by bad guys’ scene in the entire series.

Lotus Esprit S1

The Spy Who Loved Me featured an intense opener, with Bond in a ski-slope battle against a Russian squad, which involved Bond killing the lover of a Russian agent who later falls in love with him (it’s almost like a soap opera, just with submarines, nukes, and a juggernaut of a henchman with metal, sharpened teeth appropriately named ‘Jaws’).

What stood out most for movie-goers was the scene where Bond and Agent Anya Amasova are being chased in the Lotus Esprit S1 by a helicopter raining down machine gun fire on them. Bond drives the Lotus off a pier into the water below… and the Lotus turns into a submarine! He then fires a ground-to-air rocket from it, destroying the helicopter.

It was every imaginative little boy’s dream car, the ultimate spy mobile. The two then proceed to use the vehicle to investigate the underwater shenanigans of megalomaniac villain Karl Stromberg.

BMW 750iL

In Tomorrow Never Dies, a media mogul creates his own news by using his agents to attempt a war between Britain and China. Obviously, his wife falls for James Bond (sigh, everybody falls for James Bond – we reckon even the villains get a bit of a man-crush for the guy) and reveals elements of the dastardly plan.

Meanwhile, Q Branch outfits a BMW 750iL with an assortment of gadgets, including re-inflating tyres, rockets, a wire cutter, and many more besides.

But what was most memorable about the car involved something only just becoming part of our daily lives at the time. The cellphone. Hard to believe there was even a time where cellphones weren’t that common, but in the late 1990s, at least in South Africa, public phone booths were still a thing (which begs the question: where in today’s day and age does Clark Kent change into Superman?).

In Tomorrow Never Dies, Bond’s cellphone is used to actually drive the BMW 750iL, leading to an exciting car chase with James literally backseat driving on his mobile.

When the movie was released, some questioned the use of a German car with the very traditional British agent, but the UK automobile industry wasn’t exactly in the best shape at the time. And the BMW, while a premium vehicle, did blend-in more spy-like than your typical Aston Martin.

Well, those are our top three. What are yours?

We are gobsmacked. 2020 will be a great year for the electric car market.

One of our own sons of the soil has unveiled a vehicle for the ages. The Next-Gen Tesla Roadster. Elon Musk, with his high-concept cars, has conceived of a beast that – if successful – will best the best for a generation, at least.

Zero to 96 kilometres per hour in approximately 1.9 seconds. That’s you, beating that aggressive taxi driver trying to veer through the emergency lane, in a split second. Ha ha, you say, to the angry hoots.

Not that we’re encouraging aggressive driving. But a car that can handle the belligerent tactics of other vehicles on the roads? That’s like Thor’s hammer: hard hitting and pure lightening. The latter is electricity-fuelled, which…

…is pure Tesla (named after the famous scientist who helped, well, basically electrify our world), so there may be short comings. At least with petrol, you don’t have to worry about load shedding while trying to charge your car.

Let’s hope electricity gets sorted out.

However, provided things get fixed, as they very well look to be, in our parastatals, you’ll get your “galleon” of watts when you need them. Hopefully.

We consider this to be a good import option because:

The new Tesla Roadster has great range. Just shy of 1000 kays. That’s fair enough. And far enough, once fully charged. For most people, that’s about two weeks of city driving. Even with swift movements through heavy traffic, weaving between lanes to shorten your trip as much as possible.

What is especially exciting about the Tesla Roadster is, it’s a super car and yet it comfortably fits four people. So you get to be the family guy (or gal) and still be a serious sports performer on the roads.

We mean, look at that thing! It’s aerodynamically beautiful, an aesthetic work of art, designed both to look incredibly sexy and circumvent the air resistance around it. It’s so gorgeous, we consider it a modern automobile Mona Lisa.

You can reserve yours now, if you like.

Plug into pure power, because this Roadster will really ravish our roads.

Due out soon is the all-new workhorse bakkie, the Ford Ranger Raptor. What makes this bird of prey so significant is it’ll be the first Ford Ranger built in South Africa. Exciting times, and great for our local industry – especially considering our economic climate.

But that’s what the Ford Ranger Raptor is all about… riding over rough terrain in style. According to Cars.co.za, significant progress has already been made, with the first batch of 10 trial units already driving off the production line. Vroom vroom!

The production plant has seen significant investment by Ford, the American automobile maker: R3 billion, to be exact. This is to ensure that everything is ready for when the real production starts.

It’s expected that there will be quite a high demand from South Africans for the Raptor. And it isn’t hard to see why.

According to the official website, it is “a 100% uniquely designed, wonder engineered off-road performance truck to take on the terrain of your choice.”

It should be noted here, that for the Yanks, anything bakkie upwards is considered a truck, unlike in SA where trucks tend to be 3 tonners and up (not to mention infuriating drivers by slowing down the highway).

As for why it’s called a Raptor, well, we partly assume it’s the inspired design lines on the vehicle, and fierce front grill. There’s something amazing about the headlights that bring the Ranger Raptor almost to life… like it was a living, breathing metallic organism.

The new Ranger Raptor will feature an all-new infotainment device, which will keep you entertained with your favourite tracks while riding off the beaten track. And it comes in automatic transmission. Which we prefer because we’re slightly on the lazy side, though it does have a manual mode to it.

The infotainment can be easily controlled from the steering wheel. With a set of controls built into it, it makes changing music and volume, or simply taking calls via the Bluetooth, as easy as eating American pie.

Now onto the specs. The Ranger Raptor will have plenty of raw power to draw on, with its new 2.0 litre bi-turbodiesel engine. You’ll get 157 kW and 500 Nm torque power. The transmission is, as we mentioned, auto and has 10-speeds.

And we suspect, just like a real bird of prey, it will swoop in and take lauded awards from its competitors in the bakkie off-road category.

Editorial credit: Rich T Photo / Shutterstock.com

For millions of South Africans without a car, mini-bus taxis are the only form of transport that is affordable to them.

In actual fact, despite the annoyances many drivers feel when driving behind these taxis, they provide an important economic benefit to the country – by helping workers and employees get to their places of business on time, day-in and day-out. They often do this through ‘unorthodox’ driving techniques, such as using emergency lanes to skirt traffic – one could argue that getting people to their jobs on time counts as an emergency.

Inspired by this, and beset by increased congestion on Johannesburg’s roads, officials in the Gauteng Legislator have devised a plan that should soon be easing our streets of unnecessary traffic.

“People arriving late to work every day has an economic cost,” Paul Ringani, a legislator in Gauteng said. “We simply can’t afford any hindrances to getting our economy back on track. Especially now with Moody’s [the ratings agency] breathing down our necks. It’s not just uncomfortable, but also creepy. That’s why we need a solid plan of action.”

The proposal is that all drivers who take less than four other people with them to work will be required to use a mini-bus taxi as transport. Officials are already in discussions with the taxi associations to implement the plan.

“Yes, we have been talking to the City,” ‘Oupa’ Dumasane, a taxi owner, has said. “The way they are suggesting is a card system. Everyone gets a card with credits on them, and you simply slot it into a reader when you board one of our taxis. We stop everywhere, so we can easily pick people up wherever they live.”

The system, which will see millions of JHB residents leaving their cars for after-hours and weekend use, will be strictly enforced.

“Harsh fines will be administered to anyone driving alone or with less than the required number of passengers,” Colonel Johannes Karabi, a high-ranking officer at the JMPD, said. “We won’t take this lightly. Everyone, figuratively and literally, must come aboard with this plan.”

When asked as to what fines would be administered, he said, “Ja, fine, we will take your car. You will only get it back after paying an as-yet to be determined amount, and then only after seven working days. If you are asked to pay a larger amount to get it back sooner, we advise you report a case of corruption to whoever is running IPID that week. We don’t want even our own officers riding roughshod over the law.”

The proposed law will be going to the legislature later this month. It is expected to pass, as the taxi associations have all signed up for it, and a card system tender has been put out to everyone, but Busasa.

There is also currently a tender for production companies to make YouTube videos to teach regular drivers the hand signals commonly used to signal taxis which route they want to go.

Several business executives have already been approached to appear in the videos, in their three-piece bespoke suits, to show suburbanites that this new method of public transport is for everyone.

“I’ve been asked to appear in one of the three proposed videos,” said Steven Allen, CEO of BMI (Bull Manure Industries). “I know exactly the outfit I’m going to wear for it, my Armani silver pin-striped suit. It’ll be my pleasure standing on a street corner doing the ‘going to Sandton’ hand signal. In preparation for the role, I’ve already taken three rides in mini-bus taxis and am starting to get fluent in vernacular. It’s great, because you get to hear all the juicy gossip about so-and-so’s neighbour. This will be a great boon for the economy, and I think Joburgers will embrace it.”

If the law passes, it’s expected that by July we will all be taxiing our way through the bustling economic hub of the country.

UPDATE: Renowned rock group Taxi Violence has been commissioned to do a theme song for the YouTube videos.