A great flying car could come from China

  • Reading Time:3Minutes

Xpeng Motors is not only aiming to take Tesla’s laurels, but also to launch a flying car by 2024. It is no longer too bold to assume that urban transport will change radically in the coming decades, with the emergence of self-driving cars and the equally important role of air taxis, which are now being developed by countless companies around the world. For a long time, the advance of eVTOLs seemed to suck the last little air out of ideas focused on developing a conventional flying car, but the announcement by China’s XPeng on Sunday could give a new impetus to the development of winged cars.

XPeng-HT Aero flying car
XPeng-HT Aero flying car

In principle, flying cars are not entirely new, as the first such vehicle was developed almost fifty years ago, and if we interpret the concept of a flying car loosely enough, we can actually already have one today, with PAL-V’s Liberty flying car and others in development such as AKSA and Slovakia’s AirCar.

The flying car being developed by HT Aero, a subsidiary of XPeng, follows a different concept: the car, which still only exists on a visual level, looks like a conventional car, lifted into the air by retractable propellers protruding from its sides. How well this will work in practice is hard to say without a prototype. Today’s air taxis are typically lifted into the air by many more propellers, but HT Aero has a long history of developing similar vehicles: the Voyager X2 and its predecessors – which were more like conventional air taxis than flying cars – have been tested more than 15,000 times, according to the manufacturer.

No more was revealed about the concept car unveiled at Tech Day, but the manufacturer is optimistic that the car could be on the market as early as 2024. Given the XPeng’s progress, that doesn’t seem too far-fetched, given that the 2014-founded EV company launched its first electric car, the G3 SUV, just three years ago in 2018, and has already sold 13,000 units of the G3 and the P7 sedan, launched last year, in the first quarter of 2021.

The latter model has been said by many to be somewhat reminiscent of Tesla cars, but if you’re looking for parallels, you don’t have to stop at the look of the cars. XPeng announced not only the flying car at the launch, but also an improved version of their driver assistance system called Xpilot, which will also have a number of features that Teslas can have. For example, Xpilot 3.5, coming in 2022, will extend the Navigation Guided Pilot feature, which will allow their cars to drive autonomously not only on the highway, but also in urban environments. A whole new sensor package is also being introduced, including a LIDAR sensor, which means that XPeng cars may perform slightly better in urban traffic than Teslas, which are known for their lack of expensive LIDAR technology, which most manufacturers believe is indispensable for self-driving cars.

XPeng has also announced a new supercharging technology that will be introduced in their X-Power fast chargers, which promises to charge your car battery for 200 kilometres in just 5 minutes. XPeng, like Tesla, operates a fully autonomous supercharger network in China, currently consisting of 439 charging stations, which when fully deployed will be able to charge 30 cars at a time at each station.

Source: Forbes, CNBC

Recent article

EVTOL & VTOL News & Articles

The flying ambulance arrives at lightning speed

EVTOL & VTOL News & Articles

The electric car revolution could continue in the air

EVTOL & VTOL News & Articles

Unmanned aerial taxis flew in a unique formation

Electric airplane News & Articles

NASA’s Innovations: Soaring into an Electrified Flight Future

EVTOL & VTOL News & Articles

Could eVTOLs and Air Taxis Replace Public Transport ?

Additional aircraft News & Articles

The Morphobot: An Innovation in Multimodal Robotics

News & Articles Points of interest

The Dawn of AI Air Travel: Airbus and its Vision for Autonomy

Air taxi News & Articles

Volocopter’s High-Flying Ambitions for the Olympics

News & Articles Propulsion-Fuel

The Horizon of Aviation: Airbus’ Vision for 2035 and Beyond

EVTOL & VTOL News & Articles

A Shift in Aviation Licensing and Training

Drones News & Articles

Russia’s Path to Drone Supremacy

Air taxi News & Articles

Israel’s Pioneering Venture into Drone Transport

Air taxi News & Articles

More efficient air taxis in the future

Air taxi News & Articles

Testing of perhaps the most promising air taxi begins

Additional aircraft News & Articles

Navigating the Future: Autonomous Helicopters Soar High

EVTOL & VTOL News & Articles

Embracing the Future: Seoul’s Leap into Urban Air Mobility
More articles you may be interested in...

Air taxi News & Articles

The Coming Electric Air Taxi Revolution: Competing with Train Tickets ?

The Dutch company, Electron Aviation, is making a bold promise that is set to disrupt.......... READ MORE

News & Articles Propulsion-Fuel

Unveiling the Whisper of Innovation: CycloTech’s Exploration into CycloRotor Noise Levels

In the fast-paced realm of aeronautical engineering, the introduction of CycloRotors has heralded a paradigm.......... READ MORE

Points of interest

Sailing the Skies in Style: Airbus’s Novel Vision for Air Travel

Navigating the dawn of a fresh chapter in aviation, Airbus recently shared its audacious plans.......... READ MORE

Drones News & Articles

Boosting Agriculture: A Drone Revolution Awaits in Budapest

The stage is set in Hungary, as it stands on the brink of an exciting.......... READ MORE

News & Articles Propulsion-Fuel

Embracing the Future with Rolls-Royce’s Revolutionary UltraFan Engine

Just when you thought the apex of innovation had been reached, Rolls-Royce challenges the notion.......... READ MORE

Air taxi News & Articles

Testing of perhaps the most promising air taxi begins

For some of us, the very idea of an air taxi evokes scenes straight out.......... READ MORE

Additional aircraft News & Articles

Navigating the Future: Autonomous Helicopters Soar High

Unmanned helicopters are no longer a concept in some futuristic Sci-Fi novel. They're here, revolutionizing.......... READ MORE

EVTOL & VTOL News & Articles

Embracing the Future: Seoul’s Leap into Urban Air Mobility

In an audacious move to revolutionize its transport system, Seoul - the bustling South Korean.......... READ MORE