The arrival of commercial flying cars has been foretold countless times over 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.
They even created a separate company, Xpeng HT, with the sole focus of creating eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) vehicles, and now that company shared a video of its prototype’s maiden flight during a larger Xpeng presentation in China. In the final part of the video shared by Xpeng, we get to see it drive out of a garage, then it is weighed, revealing that it weighs just under 2 metric tons (4,400 pounds), before firing up its eight large rotors lifting off.
It makes sense that the company has changed things to an eight-accessory system for the latest design; this adds a lot of redundancy in case something goes wrong. However, it is much bulkier, and as a result, the new design looks less like a minority report hypercar and more like a luxury electric rally-raider with a huge box on top (as seen in the video).
If you were thinking that this vehicle looked like a normal car with a huge drone strapped to its roof, well, that’s exactly what it is. Just like with some consumer drones, though, the arms can be folded away so that they don’t stick out when you want to drive the vehicle on the road like a normal car.
The driver/pilot will still use the steering wheel to fly the car; the experience of guiding it through the air wouldn’t be too different from just driving the vehicle. According to Xpeng Aside from the steering wheel, the driver/pilot would also need to use a right-hand lever to get the vehicle to move forward and back, up and down, as well as to perform turns and hover.