We're noticing some electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft designs are beginning to look more like cars -- where they could one day fly across town and then maneuver around city streets. The first view of this revolutionary design was revealed earlier this week by California-based Alef Aeronautics. However, another company based in China actually flew one.
Chinese tech company XPeng mounted a drone onto the roof of a vehicle and called it a flying car. While the eVTOL isn't as sleek as Alef's, it actually flew.
The company shared footage of the first flight on YouTube.
"Unlike most other "flying car" concepts that we've seen before, this one actually does look a bit like a normal car. But, unlike most normal cars, this one appears to have a drone strapped to its roof," said auto blog Jalopnik.
Regardless of how viable this flying car is, XPeng wins the award for actually flying one.
One would assume there would be an easy, quick release to separate the car from the drone so it can maneuver around city streets.
So the trend now is to put wheels on eVTOLs so they can also drive around streets. Just imagine if the Pentagon got their hands on something like this -- an eVTOL hummer -- now that would be wild and useful for special forces operations on the modern battlefield (we're sure DARPA already has a design).
We’re noticing some electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft designs are beginning to look more like cars — where they could one day fly across town and then maneuver around city streets. The first view of this revolutionary design was revealed earlier this week by California-based Alef Aeronautics. However, another company based in China actually flew one.
Chinese tech company XPeng mounted a drone onto the roof of a vehicle and called it a flying car. While the eVTOL isn’t as sleek as Alef’s, it actually flew.
The company shared footage of the first flight on YouTube.
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“Unlike most other “flying car” concepts that we’ve seen before, this one actually does look a bit like a normal car. But, unlike most normal cars, this one appears to have a drone strapped to its roof,” said auto blog Jalopnik.
Regardless of how viable this flying car is, XPeng wins the award for actually flying one.
One would assume there would be an easy, quick release to separate the car from the drone so it can maneuver around city streets.
So the trend now is to put wheels on eVTOLs so they can also drive around streets. Just imagine if the Pentagon got their hands on something like this — an eVTOL hummer — now that would be wild and useful for special forces operations on the modern battlefield (we’re sure DARPA already has a design).
