While the majority of automobile manufacturers work to make the irreversible transition to the electric car a reality, with the aim of defining a new era of transportation, more sustainable and respectful of the environment, other companies are shaping the mobility of the future of a much bolder and more radical way. This is the case of the Chinese firm XPeng Aeroht, which for years has been developing a revolutionary concept of personal aerial mobility.
XPeng Aeroht, a subsidiary of XPeng Inc., is Asia's largest flying vehicle company. By integrating smart vehicles and modern aviation, this advanced engineering firm founded in 2013 has designed and developed the safest smart electric flying car for individual users introduced to date. In the immediate future, the goal of this innovative company is to provide products and solutions in the field of 3D transportation.
During the recent CES 2024 in Las Vegas, the most important consumer electronics show in the world, the Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer announced that its modular electric plane will enter mass production in 2025. With the capacity to transport up to four people, it has a range of about 300 km. It is powered by an electric propulsion system that uses solid-state batteries.
Company officials plan to begin accepting orders for their flying car starting in the fourth quarter of 2024, considering as an initial reference a price starting at $140,000 (about 129,000 euros at the exchange rate) for their vertical takeoff and landing vehicle.
He Xiaopeng, founder and CEO of XPeng, said: “The Aeroht e-VOL has the potential to revolutionize the way we move, providing a faster, more comfortable and sustainable form of transportation. “Its entry into mass production marks an important milestone for the development of electric aircraft and its potential success could help drive the adoption of electric technologies in commercial aviation around the world.”
The “on-road” driving mode is comparable to any conventional car in terms of functionality and dimensions. In flight mode, the flying car is piloted using the steering wheel and right gear lever as controls to move forward and backward, turn, ascend, hover and descend.
Subject to the laws and regulations for low-altitude airspace, it can take off and land vertically and fly over city traffic, avoiding ground congestion, but also over orographic obstacles, such as rivers, canyons or high terrain elevations, in few minutes to satisfy a new set of short-distance mobility needs.
With more than 10 years of experience in the field of low-altitude aerial exploration, in 2019 XPeng surprised with the T1, an imaginative vehicle with large propeller arms designed for short-distance tourist visits from the air. Winner of the German Red Dot Award for its exterior design, this unique proposal evolved and successive variants were presented on the idea. The X1 added to its features the ability to add subsidiary platforms according to different scenarios, to be used as aerial patrol, emergency rescues, etc.
The 2021 Dual mode for land and air travel.
In 2024, when the development of its flagship product has already reached a more advanced and “consistent” phase, the firm has released more details of its latest version. The world's first all-electric vertical take-off and landing flying car has been designed for both aerial flight and road driving.
It features a foldable rotor system for seamless conversion between driving and flying. It is equipped with a new assisted flight control system and a dual-motor backup system to ensure safety.
Likewise, it has gone from an initial configuration of a horizontal structure with a double rotor to one with multiple rotors, reducing the general complexity of the design to further improve the safety and reliability of the flight, as demonstrated a few months ago in its inaugural flight, completed successfully.
