Xpeng Aeroht’s $140,000 car can fly over traffic jams

Sopuruchi Onwuka, with agency reports

Chinese tech upstart, Xpeng Aeroht, is underway with an electric vehicle that could fly across traffic jams and other bad spots; making the product a unique vehicle that would operate in the road transport and aviation sectors.

The vehicle which was showcased at a trade confab in both Dubai, UAE, and Guangzhou, China, now falls into the evolving electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft or eVTOLs whose producers are working with regulators around the world to create a low altitude aviation industry for light craft like drones, cars, gyrocopters and sundry flying vehicles powered by batteries.

Aeroht, founded in 2013 by 45-year-old high-school dropout Zhao Deli, was the star exhibitor at GITEX, one of Dubai’s biggest annual trade conferences. He said in an interview the car which sports four electric engines and eight propellers might go into mass production in 2025 at price tag of about 1 million yuan  or $140,000.

Then flying car is far cheaper than rival Joby’s vehicle which demands $1.3 million. That’s partly because Aeroht can tap Xpeng’s extensive chain of suppliers across China, he said.

During demonstrations, the Xpeng Aeroht’s two-seater flying car had gone up and hovered in the air for about 90 minutes before achieving a smooth descent. 

In the past months, China’s Xpeng Aeroht staged two maiden public flights for its aircraft. Some would say it’s far too early for that sort of chutzpah. Others buy into it.

The EV firm’s billionaire founder He Xiaopeng and other backers are betting large they can overcome regulatory hurdles and capture a slice of what’s been touted as a $1 trillion market that could redefine how we move around.

“The flying car is approaching reality and we think it was the right time to chip in,” Brian Gu, Xpeng’s president, said on the sidelines of the Dubai event, called GITEX.

“The industry has produced a lot of technical breakthroughs, from weight reduction to obstacle avoidance and electrification.”

Investors want to find “the Tesla of the flying car industry,” said Zhang Junyi, a partner at consultancy Oliver Wyman who helped establish investment house Nio Capital. But it could take 10 to 15 years for the market to bloom. “Investing in the flying car industry is a tough marathon.”

The prototype flown in Guangzhou makes Aeroht stand out. While many eVTOLs have no wheels and can’t be driven on the ground, the Chinese company’s sixth-generation model is an actual car that also works on the road.

It looks like a luxury automobile rather than a small plane with wheels, which is some contenders’ approach.

In fact, the model is designed to be driven on the road for more than 90% of the time and only flown when there are traffic jams or obstacles.

The pursuit of eVTOLs dates back at least a decade, when entrepreneurs dreamed of democratizing the skies.

Analysts at Investment Bank, Morgan Stanley, say the eVTOL or urban air mobility field could be worth $1 trillion by 2040.

Chinese firms including Aeroht, Ehang Holdings Ltd. and TCab Tech joined the race in about the past half-decade, drawing inspiration from American names such as Joby and Archer. They nurtured a generation of entrepreneurs and investors trying to replicate the success China’s had with EVs, employing many of the same advantages: an extensive supply chain, vast pool of skilled labor, giant domestic market and — importantly — official support.

Many are counting on President Xi Jinping’s effort to displace American technology in fields from semiconductors to climate technology to galvanize funding and policy assistance.

“There are a few examples where American companies told us which sector is promising and can make money, and their Chinese counterparts just went and grabbed the market with lower prices,” said Warren Zhou, an investor with Decent Capital and backer of TCab Tech. He cited drones, hoverboards and robot vacuums.

“It will be the same with the eVTOL and flying car industry.”

Aeroht is backed by some of the biggest names in startup investing, including IDG Capital, Sequoia China, GGV Capital and Hillhouse Capital. They joined a funding round of more than $500 million in 2021 at a valuation of $1.5 billion.

According to reports reviewed by The Oracle Today, Zhao first met He, the founder of Xpeng, in 2020 after struggling for about a decade to keep his startup from going under. Zhao claims he won the entrepreneur over with a demo. “Talk first or fly first?” Zhao said he asked He. “Fly first!

Not long after that meeting in Dongguan, Guangdong province, He and Xpeng invested in Zhao’s startup and re-branded it Xpeng Aeroht.

 Headquartered in Guangzhou with R&D centers in Shenzhen and Shanghai, the unicorn has expanded from about a dozen staff in 2020 to over 700 employees as of July.

It joins a number of other well-backed startups, including Shanghai-based AutoFlight, which landed $100 million from a European investor last November to develop air taxis.

Volant Aerotech, founded in June 2021, got more than $14 million early this year.

The technology isn’t yet fully developed and the fate relies on the development of batteries with higher energy density — the amount of power versus its mass. As flying cars need more oomph and are more sensitive to loads, lighter and more capable batteries than those used in EVs are crucial. The batteries Aeroht now employs in prototypes are lab products from domestic suppliers.

Aeroht’s best-known backer is itself grappling with investor uncertainty yet they say the technology isn’t their biggest concern. Instead, they point at the commercial viability and regulatory approval.

Some eVTOL companies such as New York-listed Ehang target businesses and have started to generate revenue. This year, Ehang received pre-orders for 160 of its autonomous aerial vehicles from Malaysia and Indonesia.

AutoFlight’s eVTOL entry, Prosperity, won 260 orders in August from two companies to offer sightseeing and logistics services. The UK’s Vertical Aerospace Ltd. has racked up more than 1,400 pre-orders for its aircraft, and even Volkswagen AG in China unveiled in July its first eVTOL passenger drone prototype.

But it’ll take more than a few hundred orders to drive a market. Aeroht is betting true scale will be found in consumer products, but that’s where the steepest regulatory hurdles remain.

No country has seriously contemplated opening up its low-altitude airspace any time soon to aviators with no pilot training. China, though, has recently designated a handful of provinces including Hunan, Jiangxi, and Anhui for exploring the concept. That gives hope to startups like Aeroht, which is working with regulatory bodies in the country to find locations for trials.

“Which country gets an edge will depend on policy support and the government’s resolution for electrification reform,” said Siyi Mi, an EV analyst at BloombergNEF.