My universe has flying vehicles. As the first draft now sits, there are descriptions of hovercars & aircars. I originally wanted it to be the hover versions as similar to Star Wars land speeders (Cars with no wheels that only got a few meters in the air.) Then aircars would be the more traditional flying vehicles. By the end of the story the distinction between the two seemed pointless, except for one scene that I could rewrite easily. I really didn't like the name of either of them have... too obvious I guess. Now I'm toying with one all-encompassing aerocar. Not really certain I like this name either. So.. Aircar? Hoverlimo? Aerotruck? Anyone have a better wording?
Do you have a rough idea of the technology/physics involved? Like Maglev trains use magnetic levitation - what would your vehicles use? The name might come from that. The other idea I'd have is that they're maybe just called "cars", "limos" and "trucks". If there are no regular vehicles, I'm not sure we'd keep using the extra syllables to clarify something people in the setting would already know. We don't generally call our regular cars internal combustion cars, because that's the default. Maybe your characters would be the same.
I had the same idea about just calling them cars and then having them fly away. The one thing that prevents me from doing that is that language is strange and people do some odd things with it. That communication device sitting next to you... do you call it a phone? a cell? an iPhone? It's all the same thing but people call it different things.
I agree with this. if there are no regular cars left, then people will probably just call the modern flying cars "cars". Don't forget, we are human speak English, and VERY lazy with extra syllables. Also, you could make it just one type of car, and maybe it takes more expensive fuel or power source for flying, so most people just hover. also, if you go with something like Aerocar, make that the brand name, not what they call it. I just don't think people will say, "honey, can you run out to the aerocar real quick and grab my keys?" So name brand could be like "AeroDynamics" but their models are called different things... aerocar, hoverlimo, whatever. but everyday people just call them cars. agree with this too.
Phone. Therefore, IMO, car, truck, etc. But, really, you could make up anything you want. They could have picked up a common name based on the first brand name, like Kleenex or Xerox (or, apparently Aspirin was a brand name.) Or based on some characteristic--for example, if they land on three wheels, they could be "trikes". They could be "cars" and the ones that don't fly could be "ground cars" or "mud cars" or "snail cars". "Drones"? There's no rule that those have to stay small. Passenger drones?
Yeah, not sure about your universe, but it would make sense that the flying cars would take advantage of self driving (flying) technology, like Google Car, and could be considered more of a passenger drone. I don't see them trusting people to be able to fly around freely, way more dangerous than driving a car around. I mean, look at how many hours a pilot has to train before they are allowed to do solo flights.
