On October 18, Chery displayed its flying car prototype named “Land and Air Vehicle” at the 2024 Chery Global Innovation Conference held in Anhui, China. Chery also revealed that the prototype is still under development and had successfully flown a test distance of about 80 km.
– Advertisement –
This three-body hybrid-wing flying car has neither a steering wheel nor a gas pedal and consists of three parts: the aircraft, the intelligent cockpit, and the intelligent chassis. The flying car can switch between autonomous flying and autonomous land driving modes designed for short-distance commuting in urban areas to reduce traffic congestion problems, as claimed by Chery. Under flying mode, it can take off and land vertically.
According to previous information, Chery’s flying car is built on the Chery S2ma-scalable intelligent Mars architecture and is designed to carry two people. Its flight altitude is below 1000 m, the maximum flight speed can reach 120 km/h, and the flight time is about 40 minutes.
– Advertisement –
Flying cars are electric and can take off and land vertically without a runway. They tend to be mainly autonomous, with human intervention for emergency scenarios. With the rapid development of intelligence and the growing demand of consumers for convenient travel, a more quality travel mode has become a common expectation of the consumer market. As such, flying cars are part of the solution that automakers lay out in their imaginative future travel product offering.
So far, Xpeng, GAC, SAIC, and Geely have all successfully demonstrated their flying cars. In March this year, Xpeng’s flying car with rotors flew over Guangzhou, China. Then on June 20, Chengdu’s low-altitude traffic management service platform launched its first test, conducting a low-altitude manned travel verification flight in the city. The company that carried out this flight mission is a subsidiary of Geely. It is reported that the maximum take-off weight of this flying car was 2,500 kg, the cruising speed was 248 km/h, the maximum flight speed was 320 km/h, and the maximum number of passengers was six.
Judging from the current development trend of flying cars, the commercialization might be faster than the public expects, similar to self-driving vehicles, despite safety being a public concern.
– Advertisement –
