Recently, Xiaopeng Auto CEO He Xiaopeng said in “meeting big coffee” program, Xiaopeng cars are doing flying and car coupling products, which have been tested nearly 10,000 times, this The flying car will open the test drive at the end of 2021. At the same time, He Xiaopeng also said that in the next few years, it will see China’s ultra-low or low-altitude is open to civil society. In addition, in the next 4 years, everyone will see that Xiaopeng has several new things that exceed imagination.
In fact, in the Beijing Auto Show last September last year, Xiaopeng has released the first ultra-low-altitude flight car – Journalist T1. The flying car supports 5-25 meters super-low flight, class car driving mode, the bicycle position is parked, and it can be taken vertically. According to He Xiaopeng, the price is also similar to a luxury car. However, for those who have been paying attention to the field of flight vehicles, the news that He Xiaopeng disclosed is not exciting, because in this market, the company is getting earlier, faster, and more famous, a lot of famous arrivals are not uncommon.
Two years ago, we have written an article about flight cars, which lists examples and examples of famous enterprises in this area of this area. It is now in the past two years, and it is curious about whether these companies have achieved the initial commitment? What new progress and changes are there?
are the most closely related to China’s relationship with China’s relationship with China is the 2017 US flight car company TERRAFUGIA. On January 22 this year, Geely Holdings released news that US Eastern Time January 15th, Geely Science and Technology Group’s US flight car company TERRAFUGIA R & D (TF-1) has obtained the US Federal Aviation Bureau ) The airworthiness certificate, this is the world’s first flight car FAA airline certificate.
Mid-last year, Terrafugia announced the first time, TF-2A (second generation) pure electric vertical and landing vehicle prototype, preview TF-2A full-size prototype After the advent, the ground debugging and reliability test was completed. TF-2A selectionEasy to facilitate the composite wing configuration verification, the maximum commercial load is 200kg, the maximum range of 10km, the cruise speed is 180km / h, and the utility limit is 30km. At this stage, the pre-sequence product has already got the FAA airline certificate, and TF-2A has also begun to accept the reservation, which is scheduled to be officially launched in 2023.
Another progress is faster, which has passed the flight car Liberty, which has passed the strict European road pass assessment in October last year, manufactured by Dutch company PAL-V. At that time, foreign media said that Pal-V Liberty can take the road to take the end in the next few months.
Compared to the basic version of the flight car, Pioneer Edition has more standard equipment, including: dual control, electronic flight instrumentation system (EFIS), electric heating and carbon fiber. It is reported that the first batch of Liberty Pioneer Edition flights will begin in 2020. The buyer of the flight car needs to have a car driver’s license and a pilot license, and it takes more than 35 hours or more flight records.
In addition to the North American Consumer Electronics Show in 2021, Cadillac also showed the world to the world’s first, despite the shape and traditional car of “this car”. There is no similarity and contact, but this is also a common first in the air mechanical field. Only single seat inside the aircraft, Vtol vertical start-off the aircraft has 90 kWh battery pack, and the speed can reach 90km / h. 
In fact, in addition to waveSound, Airbus, Bell, these traditional air enterprise giants, Geely, General, Toyota and other traditional automotive manufacturers, there are also Lilium, Volocopter, XTi, such science and technology, have also joined the army of flying automobiles.
Bottleneck and obstacles 
According to Roland Berger released in November 2018, “City Air Traffic – a new type of transportation The rise of the rising research report predicted that by 2025, 3,000 flights will be put into use, and the quantity will be increased in an exponential level; it is expected that nearly 100,000 flight vehicles will be used as air taxi by 2050. , Airport shuttle and intercity flights. Morgan Stanley also issued a Blue Book that the industrial scale of air traffic in urban air in 2040 will reach $ 1.5 trillion.
Only, no matter how hot this market, participants have more strength, at least so far, flight cars are still in the early stages of studying to explore business applications, to make it truly flying into common There are still a long way to go, there are many problems that need to be solved.
The first thing to solve is the rule problem. Although PAL-V Liberty has already begun, if the national policy regulations are not allowed, even if you buy it, it will not fly around. Moreover, this is not only involved in urban airspace management, but also includes the formulation of “route”, the rules of driving, the division of accident responsibility, and the air law enforcement means and so on. So far, there is no clear, unified standards and regulatory systems for flight car certification and air traffic management.
The second is the problem of market acceptance. For example, the flight car is powered by electric distribution. The actual operating noise is much smaller than the helicopter, but the operation of urban air traffic is more intensive than existing helicopter cities. It will have much impact on urban human life. Can the public can accept? Not yet known. At least, Elon MIDDOT, which has always been high to new things, is unacceptable, and he has passed the Uber flight car on Twitter.
The last one is the technical problem. Although there have been nearly mass production flights, the industry also said that the performance of flight vehicles mainly involves the three technical fields of the vehicle body structure, flight control driving and power promotion.
Due to the power promotion technology, it has its own own professional technical threshold and difficulty, so the technical research of flight automobile performance, whether it is to make the early exploration of the car, or now the research and development practice of urban air traffic, It is mainly concentrated in the two technical fields of the vehicle body structure and flying control.
And for power promotion, more is to choose from technology and products, and have relatively few studies for flight automotive power promotion. Powerful bottlenecks can lead to low payloads, short, which is the most important issue and challenges of current flight automobile performance development.
The application scenario in the first floor 
is the same as the automatic driving a car, and the flight car wants to achieve popularity is also the “road long.” However, in the current automatic driving, there has been a typical application scenario in the leading land, including truck-based logistics scenarios, port terminals, fixed route areas, cleaning vehicles, mining areas, etc. So what about flight cars?
It is reported that there are more than 100,000 ambulances in China, but mainly deployed in urban areas, while more than 40% of people in China live in rural areas. Most of the rural population live in the mountains, islands, plateau and other places, and it is not easy to get a first aid service, so flight cars are a very effective way to rescue these people. In addition, in the case of urban terrestrial traffic congestion, the characteristics of fast moving flying cars have also made it a useful supplement to the rapid rescue of urban population.
In addition to emergency rescue, in the field of fire, flight cars also provide new ideas. At present, the fire rescue and forest fire prevention of high-rise buildings are the main pain points of the fire system, and the key to these two problems cannot be fundamentally solved is that there is no effective equipment. Flying cars can be very fast (about 1 minute) to a hundred meters height,Strong load capacity, high-flow sprinkle, very suitable for high-rise building fire rescue and forest fire prevention applications.
In addition, the development of flying cars will also bring a series of chain reactions.
Industry insiders said that the electric traction of flying car will enhance the autonomic innovation and product upgrade of electric vehicles and electric aviation; and the breakthrough of the key technology bottleneck of flying automobiles can not only lay the technology and in the development of urban air traffic. The platform foundation will also effectively promote the technical breakthrough and innovation of the power chain of power batteries, fuel cells, new lightweight materials and intelligent driving, enhance the capacity of new round of technology revolution and industrial change, and the future development of electric aviation in China has Important strategic significance.
Simply, the flight car field will become a hot spot for future capital, but now there is also a distance from this wind.