Yeah and it will likely be the cost of a brand new combine, the utility of which is to harvest the monocrop arrangements that will feed millions of people during its operational lifetime.

It is good to be pursued as a concept for future civilization organization (I guarantee the people working on flying cars at least had the opportunity to watch "the Jetsons" as impressionable children). And even if it is emissionless, I agree the noise pollution would be a huge issue (if propulsion relies on atmospheric pressure change - Musk on Rogan says a system somehow using powerful magnetism would wreak havoc on many other things).

But noise would be an issue for the conventionally structured, compacted neighborhood where driveways are probably less than 100' from each other. Real estate restrictions come as things like forgiveness of terrain between home and town and the location relative to good roads that lead to concentration of activity. Road construction meanders such that it is minimally invasive (and/or less expensive for earth-movers) and compliant with the group of scattered private land owners called on to host the road.

You cannot go somewhere on this planet unless you want to hike, fly (flat land for long runway), drive, or wait for a road to be necessary/bid/drafted/cleared/graded/paved/painted (enough productive tax payers must need the road for the idea to even be heard in the chambers of elected officials).

Neighbors live within earshot of each other's loud, necessary machines because their acreage is limited as a satellite to a city/town and zoned as residential - utilities, sanitation, telecom, post, all have a place to corral centralized services.

The mass production of commercial VTOL transportation (we already have the similarly priced helicopter, also "hand crafted" in small batches as safety/quality measure) will fundamentally alter the sprawl of civilization. We will be able to cheaply develop neighborhoods in remote areas, without the need for a grid (isolated inter-neighborhood grids will be commonplace at this point). I'd imagine the construction logistics of this would come in the way of material&tool-laden storage containers ferried by delivery craft with payload capacity akin to the Chinook.

A 50 mile commute home from work across a mountain range could be a half hour, although high wind speeds are rarely sufficient to halt ground transportation. Parking lots would not be nearly as large (wasteful) in cities expected to be built around the concept of a 100 mile radius [scattered] metropolitan area. Roads could exist for travel within a city of concentrated activity, because flight should be limited to minimum distances of a few miles because the "last mile" or "local miles" would be congested and chaotic with that third dimension of frequent takeoff/landing at random vectors, plus the concentration of work and play that is the heart of the reformed city (Car Culture Cancelled or Concealed) would be where the decibel level matters most.

An autopilot would be a minimum requirement for this. The alternative would be that everyone has to become a pilot, which at some level will be necessary even with an effective autopilot if only to understand terminology because we will begin to discuss travel intent "as the crow flies", so heading/altitide/airspeed parameters replace fast lane etiquette, right on red, and most importantly... STOPPING during a journey at any point. Never again would you need to swipe past another incoming 2000 lb vehicle going your speed in the opposite direction a mere 3' away.

We are both replying to a flying car article, and I've seen multiple here on HN over the years, so they exist and many people are working on it and interest is there. As you say, it's a luxury at this point and I wonder if a bottleneck is technological limitation and/or risk-adverse actuaries and lawyers somehow reigning in power over time thus grooming a fearful society across several decades.