Commercial flying cars gearing up for liftoff

The dream of owning a flying car, however wild it may sound, is poised to soon become a reality with a Chinese automaker one of the first in the world to start commercial production.

In late March, XPeng Motors Chairman He Xiaopeng told the China EV100 Forum in Beijing that the new energy vehicle startup's subsidiary XPeng AeroHT will start mass production of a hybrid flying car in 2026.

XPeng AeroHT's model, billed as the "Land Aircraft Carrier", consists of a ground vehicle and a flying module.

With six propellers, the electric flying module has a short flight range of up to 30 kilometers. It can be folded and stored in the ground vehicle's trunk in five minutes. He said it is the first storable module of its kind.

A plant to build the vehicle is under construction in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, with a planned annual production capacity of 10,000 units, he said.

On April 1, the company announced that it had secured loans of up to 1.26 billion yuan ($170 million) from a group of five Chinese banks for the construction, which is expected to be completed later this year.

The vehicle will be priced under 2 million yuan and deliveries will start next year, He said.

It was the third time in a month that He had mentioned publicly the upcoming arrival of the model at a high-profile event. But his repetition is understandable as the vehicle stands to revolutionize personal mobility and is an early attempt to tap into a potential trillion-dollar market.

He predicts that in the next 10 to 20 years, global flying-car sales could reach 20 percent of the automobile industry's yearly total revenue — an estimated $2 trillion.

The potentially huge market explains XPeng's long-term investment in the sector. This year alone, XPeng AeroHT's budget is set at 3 billion yuan. Over the past decade, the company has raised over 10 billion yuan to invest in flying cars which are commonly known as eVTOLs (electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle).

Entry into the sector is costly. According to a research report from the Lufthansa Innovation Hub, it costs eVTOL startups $700 million to $1 billion to progress from product development to airworthiness certification, to commercialization.

XPeng AeroHT's investment is expected to start paying off soon. Its Land Aircraft Carrier has already received nearly 5,000 orders, the company said.

"This flying car can be used for both sightseeing and rescue purposes," said Zhao Deli, president of XPeng AeroHT.

Besides this split-body model, the company is working on a one-piece flying car for long-distance flights of up to 500 km. "If you drive from Guangzhou in Guangdong province to Changsha in Hunan province, it will take six or seven hours. The flying car will take you there in one hour or so," He said.