XPeng’s Aridge flying car division is moving fast and have a product close to production-ready in China.
A couple of weeks ago, we flew to Guangzhou to have a tour of the XPeng headquarters. On the first day of our tour, we learnt about the true ambitions of this company and how it extended beyond just cars. In fact, XPeng comes across as a mixture between a mobility and tech company, and not a mere automobile producer. Sure, it makes its own cars in a large factory about an hour away from their headquarters, but the company culture itself isn’t focused on the traditional values of a car company. Instead, they’ve figured out that their end goal is to actually take the driver our of the equation entirely, and that means a lower emphasis on things like motorsport and a higher emphasis on things like semiconductor design.
To that end, they’ve designed custom silicon – the Turing chip. It’s supposedly the fastest performing in the industry with up to 3,000 trillions of operations per second (TOPS), but this is a claimed figure that no one has verified through external validation. It’s also important to note that the number doesn’t say anything about the efficiency of the chip, nor does it directly equate to better results on the field. That being said, the results ARE impressive, as we discovered ourselves as the new P7 drove US through the streets of Guangzhou without much in the way of driver intervention. Red about that experience here.
As impressive as XPeng’s self-driving is, this is only a small part of the company’s grand ambitions. They’ve also got a sub-brand dedicated to flying cars called Aridge. Aridge was previously known as XPeng Aeroht, but now has its own dedicated museum showcase and its own building on the grounds of the HQ. The museum showcases a number of landmark achievements made by XPeng in the field of flying cars and even has a number of their prototypes on display.
The roots of Aridge actually go further back than XPeng itself. Dongguan Huitian Technology was founded back in 2013 by Zhao Deli with Xpeng taking a controlling stake in 2020. Prior to its acquisition, the company had several trials including a manned flying motorcycle flight. In 2019, they designed the Traveller T1.
By the end of 2020, another prototype, the Traveller X1 was successfully test flown. By mid-2021, The Traveller X2 had completed its first manned flight and by the end of 2022, it had also conducted a public demonstration flight overseas in Dubai.
This year, Aridge has a pretty ambitious goal. They want to start selling flying cars to the public. What they’ve come up with is a two-piece solution estimated to cost around 2 million Yuan (around RM1.2 million) that should hit the Chinese market by the end of 2026 if regulations and production lines up as planned. This two-piece solution consists of the Modular Flying Car and the Land Aircraft Carrier.
The Modular Flying Car deploys from the back of the Land Aircraft Carrier in minutes but must return there to be recharged. It can recharge up to six times if the Land Aircraft Carrier has a full battery. It’s an all-electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft with six rotors and a dual duct structure. It’s capable of seating two and has a comprehensive redundant safety architecture – there are multiple redundant systems covering flight control, power and energy, low-voltage power supply, communication and control. The whole thing is built on a full-scale 800V siliccon carbide platform and the aforementioned Turing chip provides end-to-end Intelligent Flight Assistance with a single-lever control system allowing for manual override. The flying car can complete low altitude urban flights up to 30km or up to 20 minutes at a time on a single charge. While it doesn’t exactly sound very useful, we think Xpeng is targeting dense cities with high road traffic. CEOs and politicians may see the value in moving from one meeting to another with little time wasted. To be honest, the fewer we see ministerial convoys cutting through traffic, the better the public will feel as well.
The Land Aircraft Carrier is an interesting vehicle. It’s drivable with a standard driver’s license, indicating that it’s under 3,500kg fully laden despite its girth. The huge silicon carbide battery is capable of 1,000km of driving range as the vehicle uses a range extender powertrain, though the overall range will reduce if the flying car is charged. The ground vehicle can take 4 passengers.
Overall what Aridge plans to do borders on science fiction and we would have really loved to have seen a demonstration of the flight. There are videos of it flying but until we see one in action ourselves, it’s hard to judge just how ready this tech is. That, and it’s also hard to see how regulators outside of parts of China will manage this emerging sector of transportation, given the potential risk not just to flying car users but anyone caught on the ground should the worst happen. If anything, it’s time for insurance companies to start thinking about potential business areas as Aridge is dead set on making this a reality.
