oh boy! flying cars!

...and people think the Taxi cartels are upset over Uber.

I've been a private pilot since the early 1970s. I quit actively flying years ago, thanks to the spiraling costs of fuel, rental rates and insurance, and increasingly onerous regulations on when and where someone may fly. As with many good things, government policies have all but killed private aviation over the last few decades.

The biggest practical (non-regulatory) problems with private flight are piloting skills, energy costs and safety. The IoT will take care of the first, and that, coupled with the availability of small, powerful electric motors and the technology to gang groups of such engines (as seen today in quadracopters) takes care of the third. Energy costs are still considerably higher for air travel in vehicles of comparable capacity, but the eventual elimination of much ground-based infrastructure would probably make it a long-term net economic benefit, society-wise.

As with autonomous ground vehicles, the biggest obstacles to the future are not technological or economic; they're regulatory.

I also think that companies like AirBus are (naturally) thinking too much in 3D. Of course, that's a natural bias for Airbus. I think there's a huge market out there for autonomous ground effect vehicles as well. Energy costs are chopped by half or more in ground effect compared to higher flight, there may be marginal improvements in safety compared to full flight, wear and tear on both vehicles and infrastructure is greatly reduced, and the automotive/trucking/interstate infrastructure would consequentially be much less expensive to maintain. Potholes have little impact on GEVs, for example, and a grassy field is as good a roadway as million-dollar-per-mile pavement.

If entrenched interests can be kept from drowning the baby in its bath, the future's going to be fascinating.