Energy
Sunday, July 3rd, 2022 6:05 am EDT
If you’re of a certain age, you’ve been waiting for your flying car for a long, long time. Heck, you’ve probably seen a half-dozen flying car concepts come and go – if not more! – but have you seen one driving down the road? You have now. That’s a road-going prototype of the Alibaba-backed XPeng flying car concept up there, and it looks really, really real.
It’s Supposed to Look Like This
Rendering courtesy XPeng.
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Rendering courtesy XPeng.
XPeng is one of the few major players out there with a credible shot at bringing a “Tesla killer” to market. They’ve presented five versions of their flying car concept since 2016, but most of those “cars” looked more like remote-controlled drones with seats on them.
They haven’t looked like what most people think of as “cars,” is what I’m saying – but this sixth generation of the car finally looks the part. It’s a car, just that it’s a car with a heavy-duty top box (the rotor casing) on the roof.
From these pictures, the Xpeng prototype looks like it uses a heavily modified version of the sporty XPeng P7 that our own Tina Casey got the chance to drive a few years ago. The front wheels have been moved forward, giving it a longer overall wheelbase, and the car’s shock absorbers appear significantly beefier – which is probably what you’d want if you had to bring it down for a quick landing.
Beyond that, the spy shots show a large casing on the roof to hold in the rotors when they’re not in use – which makes sense, because one of the challenges of designing a flying car/driving drone like this would be locking the rotors properly to prevent damage to them when you’re driving (which would explain the heavy-duty top box). Take a look for yourselves, below, then let us know what you think the odds of Xpeng’s flying car reaching production might be in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
Xpeng Flying Car Spy Photos
Source | Images: Car News China.
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