Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla Motors, Inc., said he has been thinking about making flying and submersible cars.
Musk said that the project, for now, would be "just for fun," according to Business Insider.
"I've thought about it quite a lot ... We could definitely make a flying car - but that's not the hard part," he said in an interview this past weekend. "The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that's super safe and quiet? Because if it's a howler, you're going to make people very unhappy."
Other car companies besides Tesla are looking into producing flying cars. Terrafugia Inc. is working on an aircraft called the Transition, which has two seats, foldable wings, and can drive on roads. The company refers to its vehicle as "a street-legal airplane" rather than a flying car. The Transition, which has gas and brake pedals, as well as a steering wheel, is currently going through test flights, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Glenn Curtiss, American aviation pioneer, is often referred to as the inventor of the flying car. Glenn is responsible for the design of the aluminum Autoplane in 1917, which was only capable of short hops in the air and could not achieve sustained flight.
Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Company, said in an interview two years ago that a "flying car is a bad idea," The Los Angeles Times reported. He said that the engineering needed for a car that travels on the ground and the engineering for one that can fly are too complex to be combined into one vehicle.
However, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said there are hundreds of patents that companies are applying to in order to build flying cars.
Musk also shared his interest in building a car that functions underwater.
"We will be making a submarine car," he said. "It can transition from being a submarine to a car that drives up on the beach. Maybe we'll make two or three, but it wouldn't be more than that. It's not like we'd sell it, because I think the market for submarine cars is quite small."
