Expensive toy or the real deal? Meet China’s new ‘flying car’
XPeng could be the first of many Chinese brands to go where European manufacturers have only dreamed of
by Ed Wiseman, telegraph
The “flying car” has taken many forms over the past hundred years or so, and none of them have been very successful. Some have been little more than cars with wings, others have just been planes with number plates, many hundreds have fallen somewhere in between, but all have been united by a single trait: abject commercial failure.
There was the Convair Model 118, for example, which was a fibreglass-bodied four-seat car that would tow a pair of snap-on wings behind it. More recently, the Plane Driven PD-1 was a roadgoing derivative of the Glasair Sportsman light aircraft, basically an aeroplane that you could legally drive home if you needed to. Inventors have iterated on the concept for as long as there have been planes and cars but – for many reasons – nothing has really worked.
Flying car projects are announced every year, but none of them ever get off the ground – which is why the XPeng Aero HT Land Aircraft Carrier has attracted so much attention. The machine consists of two parts – a heavy-duty six-wheeled four-seat “mothership” and a lightweight quadcopter for two, capable of vertical take-off and a flight time of more than half an hour. Designed by Aero HT, a subsidiary of Chinese car manufacturer XPeng, the road-going SUV element has a special load bay in its boot to accommodate the aircraft, which it can automatically deploy like Thunderbird 2 releasing Thunderbird 4 – this advertisement shows it in action:
This process was demonstrated at the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in November, but the vehicle was also on static display at CES 2025 in Las Vegas this month. Flying cars are usually just vaporware, doomed to become a humourous footnote at the end of more serious reporting from this kind of event. But the plausibility of the product and the credibility of the company that brought it makes the Land Aircraft Carrier seem significantly less laughable.
Yet another flying car concept
But what exactly is XPeng bringing to the table? Currently, anyone in need of this kind of drive-fly functionality can replicate it using a Toyota Land Cruiser, a flatbed trailer and a lightweight helicopter like a Robinson R44. Sure, it’ll be more difficult to park than XPeng’s all-in-one solution, but two separate tried-and-tested vehicles are likely to be of more use to most users than a single contraption that, while novel, performs neither of its jobs particularly well.
Furthermore, machines described by their inventors as “flying cars” have been in and out of the news for decades, with many offering more impressive range and speed – both in the air and on the road – than the XPeng. The AirCar V5, for example, can cruise at more than 105mph and travel for around 600 miles before refuelling, making it a useful light aircraft for overseas trips rather than just a glorified drone for joyrides around the neighbourhood.
So why is everyone so excited about yet another ‘concept’ flying car?
There are a number of reasons. Firstly, XPeng’s daft name belies what a serious player it is, both in China and around the world. In 2024 it shifted some 190,000 vehicles, which is a few million behind the very largest players but which still puts it in fairly mainstream territory. Its shares are traded in New York and Hong Kong, it’s been backed by Volkswagen, and it’s one of the Chinese brands making serious inroads outside its domestic market – including the UK, where it plans to have 20 dealerships by the end of the year. The AeroHT arm began as a startup but became part of XPeng in 2020. Essentially, it’s not just some blokes in a shed, unlike many of the flying car projects to have come and gone over the years.
Secondly, you could argue that XPeng’s vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) arrangement is far closer to the jet- or rocket-powered flying cars of our collective imagination than any of the aforementioned shed-built projects, which have tended to be fixed-wing, and therefore useless without a runway. While the AirCar above might offer far superior performance in the sky, the fact you need a run-up to get there limits how and where it can be deployed.
XPeng’s Aero HT Land Aircraft Carrier might technically be two separate vehicles rather than one, but the vertical take-off capabilities mean you can theoretically use it anywhere you can drive to, massively increasing the amount of real-world applications (and therefore buyers) the Land Aircraft Carrier might have.
And perhaps most importantly, it actually works. The roadgoing part of the two-vehicle setup has recently been spied undergoing testing, just like any other upcoming SUV, and the flying element was shown off at the airshow in China in November. In fact, members of the press assembled on the apron of Zhuhai Airport witnessed the quadcopter take off vertically with one person at the controls, fly quite convincingly around, before landing vertically back at the same spot – all the functions you’d expect from a real flying car.
Will it ever fly in British skies?
XPeng has announced that it will begin delivering this product to customers in 2026. It has also announced that it will cost around £220,000. Whether you believe either of these proclamations is up to you, but regardless of price and timeframe, the project is happening; XPeng has broken ground on a 10,000-unit-a-year factory for its flying cars, and while sales are likely to be restricted to China for now, the XPeng Aero HT Land Aircraft Carrier is likely to become a commercially available flying car in the near future. The fact that a product like this is anywhere near a saleable state is testament to XPeng’s commitment to, and abilities in, the e-VTOL sector.
But that’s only the first hurdle. The Land Aircraft Carrier will need to overcome innumerable regulatory obstacles before it gets anywhere near international skies, and many more before the likes of you or I could fly it. Indeed, most people reading this will need to jump through a few hoops themselves before clambering into the cockpit of any aircraft – the thousand or so private helicopter pilots licenced in the UK might have a bit of a headstart, but the majority of us are many thousands of pounds worth of lessons and exams away from being allowed near the controls, despite XPeng’s claim that you can learn to fly one with just a few hours’ tuition.
And then there are the more obvious practical considerations. Even if the XPeng Aero HT Land Aircraft Carrier receives the paperwork it needs to be sold and flown internationally, even if it becomes available in the UK for an affordable sum, and even if you become a private helicopter pilot with appropriate ratings to fly it, you still won’t be able to land it in a Waitrose car park or pick your partner up from the station. Electric aircraft are noisy, disruptive, hazardous, and generally unwelcome in crowded places; helicopter movements in particular are (understandably) quite carefully controlled and, if this device ever makes it to the UK at all, its operations will probably be limited to the way normal choppers are used now – mostly between airports and private, empty land.
It isn’t Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or the Ford Anglia from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. And while it represents a significant milestone in the development of e-VTOL tech, it has a long way to go before being anything other than an expensive, noisy toy. But the Aero HT Land Aircraft Carrier is the closest thing we have to a mainstream flying car – and XPeng could be the first of many Chinese brands to go where European manufacturers have only dreamed of.
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