\nA thing about “we were promised flying cars” is people have constantly been inventing flying cars for near a century now, they are inevitably worse cars than dedicated cars, worse planes than dedicated planes, and more expensive than one of each.
Like, pretty much every part of the power transmission/propulsion system after the internal combustion engine is completely different and heavy. There’s stuff like \u2013 small aircraft engines don’t use auto-style spark plugs, they have dual magnetos that you test preflight on the runway every time so you’re sure they won’t both fail simultaneously. Like, “there is an enclosed compartment where people sit facing forward” is kinda the limit of what they share in common.
Like, part of the “focus on reliability over all else” is that for its anti-knock properties \u2013 and a lot of Pipers and Cessnas out there still have 1950s engines \u2013 avgas is still leaded.
I mean the flipside of that is that avgas is increasingly marginal, not too many countries had a piston aircraft scene in the first place, I talked how that one Sandpoint aircraft factory that saved my bacon made STOL mission aircraft for the SE Asia/Oceania field that ran on jet fuel cause you could more reliably source that through the American military base infrastructure
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