Flying cars and drones that carry people could be a reality (GOOG, GOOGL)

BI Intelligence

Anyone who has seen Back to the Future Part II has joked that the movie lied to us because flying cars hadn't filled the skies by 2015.

Maybe the movie just had the year wrong.

In the last week, three major announcements came that pertained to flying cars and drones that can actually ferry human beings.

Google co-founder Larry Page has personally invested $100 million into Zee.Aero, a company that is working on creating a flying car, according to Bloomberg. Last year, business filings listed Sebastian Thurn, the founder of Google X and Google's self-driving car program, as the president of Zee.Aero.

Second, EHang will start testing in Nevada on its autonomous drone that can carry one human passenger at a time, according to BBC. Expectations put the price of the drone, known as 184, at approximately $200,000.

Finally, Dutch company PAL-V Europe NV announced it would release a three-wheeled flying car on the consumer market by 2018, according to Mirror. This vehicle would cost approximately $565,000.

Companies have been pushing to create flying cars and autonomous drones for years, but the technology necessary to do so has just become available mostly because much of the investment has funneled to technology that powers self-driving cars.

Bloomberg cites former NASA engineer Mark Moore, who said that making flying cars is actually easier than self-driving cars. He did not explain the logic behind that, but it's likely true because flying cars would not face as many obstacles in the air as self-driving cars would on the ground.

For more, see the detailed report on self-driving cars from BI Intelligence. Click here to learn more about how you can gain risk-free access today.