A Flying Car Was Tested On The Roads In China

As the pinnacle of technology and innovation, flying cars were something society thought would be the norm by the time we’d hit the 2020s. However, even if the future is now, flying cars still aren’t. Chinese electric car manufacturer XPeng is looking to change that as it tests its own version of a flying car.

Previous concepts of flying cars always envisioned a vehicle that looked like a much larger drone. Most could only fit one passenger and often, there were no real wheels on the cars making them seem more akin to a tiny plane. XPeng’s previous iterations of a flying car contained many of these features, as well.

Images of the car being tested have since surfaced on Chinese social network Weibo.

Atop a modified version of the XPeng P7 electric sedan sits a heavy box containing the rotors, which often present a challenge for flying car design as they might sustain damage during driving. The car also has a more robust shock absorber to aid in the takeoff and landing of the vehicle. 

Though there were no real sightings of the car taking off, all these modifications allude to real progress being made on XPeng’s flying cars after it announced that it would begin mass production in 2024. 

The vehicle is still very much in the early stages of development. The main purpose of this test seems to be to gauge how these certain parts would work on the roads as the car is meant to be driven on land and in the skies.  

[via Car News China and Clean Technica, cover image via XPeng]