Giving Compass' Take:

• Flying cars are becoming a reality. Not only are they cheaper and practical, but such vehicles may also even be better for the environment than electric cars, as The Atlantic reports. 

• What other innovative advances are happening in the automotive industry? What problems could arise with the introduction of flying cars? 

• How will flying cars affect the environment? Click here to find out. 

It has a sleek black pill of a body, with two rigid, white arms sprouting from its sides. It looks, in other words, like an iPad had a baby with a crop duster, or like a Volkswagen Bug from a future designed by Bjork. In the video, it sits on a small, square tarmac, surrounded by grass, then begins to purr and buzz. In a nearby hangar, a group of attractive young Germans stands and watches intently.

And then, slowly, the vibrating thing rises from the ground. Several feet of air open between its body and the tarmac. It is flying. It has neither a small plane’s propeller, nor a helicopter’s immense rotor, nor a drone’s spidery appendages. Yet it is flying all the same.

On Thursday, the German start-up Lilium announced that it had completed its first test of that strange and buzzing vehicle, the five-seater Jet. By the middle of the next decade, Lilium claims, reserving a seat on one will be as easy as hailing an Uber.

Read the full article on the future of flying cars by Robinson Meyer at The Atlantic.