XPeng AeroHT Applies For Flying Car Patents, Will It Be Road Legal?
XPeng AeroHT has applied for a patent for its new flying car, but will it work?
Remember way back in the day when people were so sure that we would have flying cars in the future? Well, in the immortal words of Neil LaBute, “The future is now” and while Malaysia’s vision 2020 ended up being pushed back, it appears China has beat us to the finish line and will introduce its own flying car soon.
So Chinese automaker, XPeng AeroHT, has just applied for patents for its new flying car, which is assumed that this may even be a mass production vehicle and to me it looks like a random car with a mega sized drone welded onto its roof and this makes the car extremely confusing to me.
Moreover, XPeng AeroHT is a Chinese automaker, founded in 2013 with the support of Peng CEO He Xiaopeng. And the brand had already made its first “flying car” in 2016 which apparently did not look like a flying car, but more like a big drone and now it appears that the brand is ready for a new generation of flying cars.
In 2021, XPeng AeroHT announced its sixth generation flying car will be able to be driven on public roads and the brand applied for the these patents in late 2022 which also showed the prototype which is seen in the pictures, the only question now is, will it be road legal for the rest of the world?
On top of that, XPeng AeroHT has applied for a patent for a new flying car now and as we can see, its exterior design is different from the prototype. It appears to have a weirdly long body with a long wheelbase and short overhangs. It also appears that a harness-like structure runs along the roof of the car, so how will one open the boot?
From the front, the new flying car features X-shaped LED DRLs along with wide wheel arches, two windshield wipers and rear view cameras instead of mirrors. In the rear, it has a rather simple appearance with four LED taillights and an overall almost van like silhouette.
Previously, XPeng shared that the Aero HT flying car would weigh about 1,000 kg and as for the market debut, it was said to be launched in 2024 with a starting price of RMB1,000,000 (roughly USD145,000). Of course, the main feature of this vehicle is eight rotors mounted on the roof.
These rotors are attached to a frame and have a folding mechanism with visible hinges. And the XPeng AeroHT engineers stated they are really close to developing an actual folding mechanism and previously, they reported that the most difficult part is to lock rotors properly to prevent damage from vibrations when a car is driving on the road.
We got all this from CarNewsChina and their full article is linked here. Thank you CarNewsChina for the information and images.
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