Fire up the flux capacitor and tell Doc you’ll be back in time for dinner — a so-called flying car is scheduled to be debuted at the New York Auto Show this week. And while it won’t travel through time and Marty McFly won’t actually be driving it (George Jetson will be! Kidding, again), we’re still pretty excited.

Forbes.com’s Hannah Elliott says a company called Terrafugia will present the Transition, which can fold up and fly 100 miles per hour with a range of almost 500 miles. While firmly planted on earth, it gets around 35 miles per gallon with premium unleaded gas.

And while maybe this is more of a step in the Jetsons direction — like the pizza button we heard about last week — time travel can’t be far behind, right?

“This is what we can do today with existing technology inside the existing regulatory structure that we have and the physical infrastructure with airports and air space,” Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich says. “It’s something that actually works.”

Of course, there are obstacles like ground transportation and hangar storage, dealing with all that air control stuff, and those who would scoff at this car-plane. It’s actually certified as Light Sport Aircraft, and there are plenty of critics who wouldn’t classify it as an auto at all

Forbes quotes a private pilot who says it’s “targeted toward people who buy gadgets from Hammacher Schlemmer. It’s not a car at all,” he says. “It’s an airplane that they’ve dressed up with some car-looking fairings.”

I don’t know about you, but if my white-noise machine from Hammacher Schlemmer could fly me into the sky, I’d be pretty excited.

The Flying Car Comes To The New York Auto Show [Forbes.com]

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