The Xpeng flying car
This is not the first VTOL the world has seen, but most prototype VTOL cars (VTOL stands for Vertical Take-off and Landing) tend to more closely resemble smaller planes.
The arrival of commercially viable flying cars has been erroneously foretold countless times before over the course of the last century, but in recent years, with the popularization of electric vehicles, the idea that we will travel around like the Jetsons in the foreseeable future seems to be gaining traction again. Companies dedicated to providing such a product are now popping up, and other companies like China’s Xpeng are also looking to allocate resources for this.
The company admits that it is very difficult to get a 2-ton vehicle airborne and that it couldn’t currently fly more than a few dozen miles on one charge of its battery, but that the test flight was a success and it is optimistic that it will be able to do deliver the world’s first electric vehicle that will be able to both drive and fly.
The Xpeng is a flying car developed by the Chinese company XPENG. It was first unveiled in 2013 and it has been designed to be road legal, with the wings folding up when driving on public roads. The vehicle can reach speeds of up to 80 mph (130 km/h) and uses four electric motors for propulsion. In 2015, XPENG revealed that they were working on a second model, which would have more powerful engines and could fly at higher altitudes than its predecessor. In 2016, the company announced that its new prototype had reached an altitude of 1,000 feet (305 m). However, this was
Xpeng VTOL Flying Electric Car Successfully Completes First Flight. It’s a massive 2-ton vehicle with a huge drone strapped to the roof that just successfully completed its maiden flight.
According to the company, in early 2021, this will be a 6th generation vehicle, and the company also announced that serial production is expected in 2024. In June 2022, XPeng announced that it had received an investment from an undisclosed investor and that it remained committed to releasing the aircraft in 2024.
