Unlike in my personal life, I don’t usually use “The Swears” in my writing. But Jason Torchinsky told me I need to use a lot of profanity in this post, so fuck it. I’m going to say fuck a lot. And also bullshit. But to be fair to Jason, he’s fucking correct. The only way to really describe the latest news about flying car racing is “fucking bullshit.”

Specifically, I’m talking about a startup/company/organization called Airspeeder. It recently released a video showing what’s supposedly flying car drag racing. And yes, I can admit that collection of words does sound pretty cool. The only problem is, they’re not fucking flying cars because flying cars aren’t fucking real.

If you just look at the text and the hashtags in that tweet, you might think I’m a fucking moron. It doesn’t say anything about fucking flying cars. Fuck, even the thumbnail calls it an EVTOL drag race. So where’d I get the idea the company calls them flying cars? From their fucking Twitter bio.

But just like every other bullshit “flying car” you see written up on the internet, they’re not fucking cars. Not even in the way that the Elio (RIP) could have arguably been called a car if it had ever happened. Because they don’t any fucking wheels.

This shit’s just drone racing, which you know they know, because the tweet includes a drone hashtag, but not one for flying cars. Hell, it’s a stretch to even call it drag racing since according to my calculations, 300 meters is a lot less than 1320 feet. But let’s not dwell on that since that’s getting a little too prescriptivist for my taste.

Back to the fucking drone racing thing. They’re controlled remotely, not driven (flown?) by a person sitting in the actual vehicle. But they still have the audacity to call these things flying cars? On what grounds? That anything that moves under its own power is a car? Does that mean an electric scooter is a car? Am I a car?

As we’ve made clear way too many fucking times before, . . . . I mean, the concept of a vehicle that you can drive on the road and also fly in the air exists.

At least the bullshit vaporware companies that pretend they’re only months away from selling you a real flying car put wheels on the thing. These people want us to believe wheels don’t even matter.

What’s truly shameful here isn’t a startup incorrectly using a cool term for their drones. It’s that real flying car racing would be fucking awesome, and no one else seems to care.

Think about it. A lot of what would make a plane a good plane would also make it a worse car. So right from the start, teams would have to decide which compromises to make and where. Similarly, some people would be better pilots than drivers, while others would be better drivers than pilots. Who do you hire? How do you train? This is all interesting shit.

Then think about the actual race. One part on the track. The other part in the sky. Having to land and take off multiple times per race. Hell, let’s make it electric and add in battery swaps. Tire changes. It would be chaos in the best way possible.

But no. All we get for now is some bullshit drones that don’t even fucking have wheels.