mind ucan-araba-geldi-ici-bos
The flying car is here. It's empty.
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“In 116 years nobody built a flying car, but the dream got sold every single time; trust is capital you spend with every promise, and the future didn't come from the sky, it quietly landed in our pockets.”
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01 · Cooked
What I think about this today.
The flying car is here. It’s empty.
The generation before me was almost sure they’d be riding flying cars by the year 2000. I was born in ’95, I barely remember us entering 2000. But I inherited that dream. We all did.
Last Thursday in Texas, Tesla showed us a flying car. It took off, did a flip, jumped over the other cars. And there was nobody inside.
An inherited dream
For me, flying cars probably started with The Jetsons. Since childhood one question kept bugging me: if everyone drives a flying car, what does the traffic even look like?
For the last few years that question has been coming back to me. When I take a long drive with my older son, he asks from the back seat: “Dad, if we had a flying car, we’d go so much faster, right?” I inherited this dream from the generation before me. Now it feels like I’m passing it on to the next one.
A 116-year-old promise
I got curious: when was this promise first made? Turns out it started in 1910 with a French painter. Villemard drew a postcard series called “In the year 2000”: flying police officers, flying cars.
Then comes Henry Ford, the man who put cars in everyone’s hands. In 1926 he builds a small plane he calls “the Model T of the air.” Two years later the test pilot crashes into the sea with it, the body is never found, and the project gets shelved. Ford doesn’t give up on the dream. In 1940 he says: “You’ll see airplanes and cars combined. You may smile today, but mark my words.”
In 1962 The Jetsons comes out. A cartoon set in 2062: the dad flies to work, and when he gets there he folds the car into his briefcase. In 1989 Back to the Future Part II arrives. Doc Brown says “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” and the DeLorean flies to October 21, 2015.
When October 21, 2015 actually came, people celebrated. A shoe brand really made the self-lacing sneaker, a car brand made a hoverboard that only floated over a special track. But there was no flying car.
Peter Thiel put it in one line: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” So the flying car isn’t really a technology. It’s a ruler. It’s how we measure “have we reached the future yet?”
Thursday night
The story starts in 2017. At the end of a truck unveiling, Tesla rolls out a red sports car: the new Roadster. The promise: production in 2020. People put down $50,000 deposits.
2020 comes and goes. This year the unveiling date got pushed again and again, the last time because of rain, until it finally landed on October 15. The show starts at 7:55 pm. In Back to the Future, 1955 is the year Doc Brown comes up with the time machine. Before the show, Christopher Lloyd, the actor who played Doc Brown, posts “Almost there.” An incredible piece of marketing.
The car runs a reverse loop ramp, rights itself, jumps over the other Teslas. It feels like watching a movie scene. But what caught my eye was that the car was empty. It was remote controlled. The explanation: so nobody dies.
In Back to the Future, Doc Brown drove the car. In The Jetsons, a dad did. Nobody is in the driver’s seat of 2026’s flying car.
Why now?
Why would you launch a car with no price tag with a show this big?
First, look at the promises. In 2017 they said production in 2020; now it’s 2028. They said 1,000 km of range; it’s down to half. They said four seats; now it’s two. There’s still no price, but the deposit is still $50,000.
The core business isn’t shining either. Last quarter they delivered close to half a million cars, mostly the classic Tesla models. The truck whose window shattered on stage in 2019 stayed around 8,000 units. The stock has been down since the start of the year; the morning after the show it rose 5 percent, then closed the day 2 percent down. Earnings come out six days later. The timing feels telling to me.
This isn’t the first time. The 2017 truck show landed in the months when car production was struggling. In 2019 the “bulletproof” window shattered on stage. In 2024 robots served drinks and danced, and it later turned out people were controlling them from behind the scenes. Tesla’s ad campaign is the show itself.
My share: trust is capital
While talking about all this I asked myself: what am I doing? I’m a bit of a Henry Ford fan. I think trust is capital, and the way you spend that capital is by making promises. Make someone a promise and don’t keep it, and what you lose is trust.
Over time Tesla is showing us it has lost that trust. When Elon Musk says something now, we approach it with doubt: will it really happen, or are we being sold a dream again?
You can buy attention fast. Trust doesn’t work that way. Trust is capital that builds up over time, by keeping the promises you make.
The future landed in our pockets
In 116 years nobody built a flying car, but the dream was sold over and over. It became a postcard, a movie scene, a cartoon, or, like Tesla did, a $50,000 deposit.
Meanwhile, things we never dreamed of arrived. The phone in our pocket is a huge revolution. AI assistants that talk to us are a huge revolution. But somehow we see the flying car as sitting above all of them. We always looked for the future in the sky. Maybe it already landed in our pockets.
On our next long drive, my son will ask again. This time I’ll give a different answer: “We probably won’t have a flying car, son. But the things you’ll use when you grow up, nobody can even imagine today.”
Open questions
- How did you imagine the future as a kid?
- When does a company, or a person, realize they’ve used up their trust capital?
Sources
- Villemard, En L’An 2000 postcards (1910).
- Ford Flivver (1926) and test pilot Harry Brooks’s crash (1928).
- Henry Ford, 1940: “Mark my words: a combination airplane and motorcar is coming.”
- The Jetsons, 1962. Back to the Future Part II, 1989.
- Peter Thiel / Founders Fund: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”
- Tesla Roadster show, October 15, 2026 (TechCrunch, CNN, Electrek).
02 · Thesis history
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Current · 17 October 2026
In 116 years nobody built a flying car, but the dream got sold every single time; trust is capital you spend with every promise, and the future didn't come from the sky, it quietly landed in our pockets.
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116 yılda uçan araba yapılamadı ama hayali her seferinde satıldı; güven, verdiğin sözlerle harcanan bir sermaye ve gelecek gökyüzünden değil, sessizce cebimizden geldi.
03 · Distribution
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04 · Links
- This idea related SaaS isn't dying, it's changing shape People don't pay to buy software, they pay for the promise that it will still be supported tomorrow. As copying gets easier, SaaS doesn't end, it changes shape. Testing
- This idea related How are you this consistent? Consistency doesn't come from in-the-moment decisions but from breaking a long-term vision into small pieces and asking every day "what do I need to do today?"; and it doesn't last unless you keep your 10 units of focus balanced between work, family, health and friendship. Testing
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