Science fictions from the 19th and 20th centuries tended to become the science facts of today. Automobiles are now ubiquitous. Air travel is common. Computers are everywhere, even in handheld devices. The internet has sped up communication so much that many fret over the social problems this has created. With those fiction-to-fact transformations in mind, why don’t we have flying cars yet?

Cyberpunk novelist William Gibson famously said the future is “already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed,” and that appears to be the case with flying cars. For those with enough pull, it’s possible to at least test-fly some vehicles that could be described as flying cars. However, these are still rare, expensive, and typically not exactly what folks have in mind from seeing these vehicles in the movies.