In November XPeng established in Dubai, the ability of an AeroHT electric car prototype, developed by a homonymous start-up financed by it, to rise into the air up to a height of tens of meters using eight propellers and four electric motors. Subsequently, a test flight was also carried out in the company’s native Guangzhou, and by 2025 the company intends to launch a production version priced at around $140,000.
Image source: XPeng AeroHT
This is reported Bloomberg with reference to the comments of Zhao Deli, the founder of the startup AeroHT, who has been working on the creation of such a hybrid between an electric vehicle and an octocopter since 2013. Now the existing prototype of a flying electric car has reached the sixth generation in its development and is one of the few vehicles that allows most of the time to move on the ground and only in rare cases to rise to the sky. It is assumed that 90% of the time the car will move exactly on the earth’s surface and will have to take off only to overcome some outstanding obstacles or traffic jams. However, the developers consider the main difficulty not at all technological challenges, such as the creation of sufficiently light traction batteries, but regulatory restrictions from the authorities. In the case of the “flying electric car”, everything is aggravated by the fact that the people driving them are unlikely to count on the need to obtain a pilot’s license.
As the developers explained, the prototype of the flying electric car is now equipped with experimental Chinese-designed batteries and four electric motors. In general, cooperation with Chinese component suppliers allows AeroHT to predict that the cost of the machine in serial incarnation will not exceed $ 140,000. XPeng AeroHT is headquartered in Guangzhou, and research centers are located in Shenzhen and Shanghai. If in 2020, before the XPeng investment, AeroHT had a workforce of just over 10 people, it has now grown to 700 employees. In 2021, the startup managed to raise around $500 million in funding, the business capitalization is estimated at $1.5 billion. XPeng, despite being a strategic investor, is not the only one who believes in the success of the idea: many US venture capital firms have already invested in AeroHT’s capital.
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