The Chinese flying car has taken off

The electric device, called X2, can travel for 35 minutes on a single charge. What was just a fiction a decade or two ago is now seen as the future of urban transport. This time it’s not an electric car, but a flying car, which is being developed by many companies at the same time. Some of them have already achieved quite some success.

Now another company has entered the race, a Chinese company. XPeng has just unveiled an electric flying car called the X2, which is more like a drone than a car in the classic sense. It has no wheels, for example, but instead takes off from the familiar helicopter skids and lands on them when it lands.

The company’s chief executive, Ho Xiaoping, has posted a video on the Chinese social networking site Weibo showing the X2 in action – without passengers for now. The X2 is a two-seater. It weighs 360 kg, and two passengers can weigh up to 200 kg. It has a range of 35 minutes and can reach speeds of up to 130 km/h. Its special feature is that it is self-guided, meaning it can plan and execute its own flight path and landing, Electrek reported.

The machine is powered by a total of eight independent batteries, and eight propellers are mounted on the four axles. A parachute has also been fitted, so that in the event of an emergency, there is still the possibility of landing safely with the passengers. It is not yet known when it will be commercially available.