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

BI Intelligence

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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.

And yet, the era of self-driving cars seems to be approaching rapidly, as companies such as Google, Uber, Tesla, and more are creating cars with self-driving features or fully autonomous vehicles.

John Greenough, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on self-driving cars that examines the major strides automakers and tech companies have made to overcome the barriers currently preventing fully autonomous cars from hitting the market. Further, the report examines global survey results showing where fully autonomous cars are highly desired.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• Three barriers have been preventing fully autonomous cars from hitting the road: 1) high technological component prices; 2) varying degrees of consumer trust in the technology; and 3) relatively nonexistent regulations. However, in the past six months, there have been many advances in overcoming these barriers.
• Technology has been improving as new market entrants find innovative ways to expand on existing fully autonomous car technology. As a result, the price of the components required for fully autonomous cars has been dropping.
• Consumer trust in fully autonomous vehicle technology has increased in the past two years.
• California became the first US state to propose regulations. California's regulations stipulate that a fully autonomous car must have a driver behind the wheel at all times, discouraging Google's and Uber's idea of a driverless taxi system.

In full, the report:

• Examines consumer trust in fully autonomous vehicles
• Identifies technological advancements that have been made in the industry
• Analyzes the cost of fully autonomous technology and identifies how cost is being reduced
• Explains the current regulations surrounding fully autonomous cars

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The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the emerging world of self-driving cars.