Are Ion Thrusters the Future of Flying Cars? Spoiler - Probably Not But... Hover Boards... Maybe?

Undefined Technologies Ion Propulsion
Drone prototype 3D concept image.

You may have heard of Ion engines or, more likely, Ion thrusters. NASA uses them on their spacecraft to help maintain a craft's position or to propel them through space. 

Upon hearing that you might think they're big, powerful engines, but actually they are not. They work well in the vacuum of space but, once any kind of atmosphere and gravity is involved they'd be hard pressed to launch you off the ground if you strapped four of them to your lawn chair and yelled "up, up, and away!"

I am no expert on Ion thrusters - they're basically magic that science has an explanation for. If you want to know the details, The Space Techie website has a layman's explanation. 

Build Your Own Ion Thruster

Earth based Ion Thrusters work a bit different to their  space based cousins by Ionizing the same air that we breathe to create thrust (an effect known as Ionic-wind). 

While they sound highly sophisticated the tech has been around for a long time. You can actually build your own Ionic thruster with a cheap battery and easily obtained materials. YouTuber Integza built an Ionic Plasma thruster in a very watchable video below that serves as a great demonstration of how Earth based Ionic thrusters work. 

You don't even need to get as advanced as he did. It's possible to build a very basic lifter ionocraft with sticks, electrical wire and aluminium foil. In fact, when first discovered these kind of lifter crafts were first thought of as anti-gravity vehicles.

Here's One Undefined Technologies Built Earlier

One company, known as Undefined Technologies, claims to have made a drone that works almost entirely by Ion propulsion that they're planning to bring to market as a delivery drone. See their test flight of their experimental prototype below.

Top view detail of Undefined Technology's
Ion propulsion drone. Note the fan at
the center.

While they're marketing it as a 'silent' drone it clearly isn't. Looking at other angles of this drone in other videos on Undefined Technologies website it clearly has some kind of fan at the center.

It sounds remarkably like a regular drone with a bunch of wire grid arrays attached to it that don't actually look like they're configured to create the Ionised propulsion they're supposed to deliver.

Flying Car Potential?

Hypothetically, let's says Undefined Technologies system not only works but could be scaled up to lift something the size of the average five seater family car. It would be the perfect system. It's quiet, runs on electricity, and it doesn't have any pedestrian blending rotor blades to contend with.

Currently the technology isn't likely to lift a car three to five storeys up into the air, like we were promised by movie flying cars, but maybe it could generate enough thrust to work more like Luke Skywalker's Landspeeder in Star Wars Episod IV?

Or maybe it's the technology that finally makes hover board skateboards, like those seen in Back to the Future II, a reality?

Presently it seems to boil down to the battery size that would be needed to generate enough thrust to lift anything. Once you factor in the battery's weight the whole system becomes less efficient compared to other propulsion systems.

However with modern electric car batteries, maybe they've reached a point that a similar battery would be more than enough to power an Ion propulsion system economically?

All I can say is I hope this tech can be scaled up because, so far, it's the only system that could deliver something that vaguely reassembles a flying car from the films.