Terrafugia's flying car - front view

It's just a scale model now, but the Transition "personal air vehicle"--also called a "roadable plane"--could be scooting through the air in just a few years. That's the goal of start-up Terrafugia, which is aiming to produce a fully operational prototype by 2008 and at least a few production models by the end of the decade.

Terrafugia has a healthy helping of MIT cachet--and cash. It's a project of MIT grad student Carl Dietrich and colleagues at the school's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and is starting out with $30,000 from the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize.