Science fiction movies have the "magic" of predicting the future development of science and technology in the real world, when intelligent assistants, biometrics, air operations, virtual reality, etc. gradually enter our daily lives from the big screen, what is the next scientific and technological achievement to be realized? In many science fiction movies, flying cars shuttle between skyscrapers are always dazzling, and they also show the possibility of future automotive technology development. As a large number of companies such as Xiaopeng and Geely put their attention on the field of flying cars, everything became real. In this era when autonomous driving has not yet been fully realized, companies with a "keen sense of smell" are already eager to try in a farther direction.
A few days ago, at the "1024 Xiaopeng Automobile Technology Day", in addition to demonstrating the functions of automobile automatic driving, Xiaopeng Automobile also announced the sixth generation of Xiaopeng Huitian flying cars, and the official goal is to achieve mass production in 2024 and control the price within 1 million yuan. Judging from the video released on xiaopeng science and technology day, Xiaopeng's sixth-generation flying car is very sci-fi, like a high-tech product driven out of a science fiction movie.
▲ It seems to be a small flying car from a science fiction movie
In addition to Xiaopeng, Geely is also one of the domestic enterprises that are at the forefront of the field of flying cars. As early as 2019, Geely's Volocopter electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle has been successfully tested in Singapore. And Geely's other flying car company Taili has even begun to accept reservations; foreign giants are also not idle, Toyota has begun to test electric vertical take-off and landing and other technologies, and completed the first manned flight test last year, the tester flew a SkyDrive flying car successfully over the Toyota Proving Ground in Japan, hovering in the air for about 5 minutes; at the 2021 North American Consumer Electronics Show, Cadillac showed the VTOL vertical take-off and landing aircraft for the first time. This is also GM's first foray into the field of aerial machinery. The aircraft has a built-in 90kWh battery pack, which can reach a speed of 90km/h; Uber launched a flying car test ride service in Melbourne, Australia; Boeing and Google co-founder Larry Page invested in the "Kitty Company", and its flying car project Meet Cora is also steadily advancing commercialization.
International investment bank Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2030, more than 60% of the world's population will live in cities, the flying automotive industry will create a market size of $300 billion, will initially convert some of the market share of ground transportation, aircraft and public transportation, with the development of technology will eventually open up a number of new business areas, 2040 can grow to 1.5 trillion US dollars market.
Morgan Stanley's forecast for the future of the flight market.
Flying cars grow in popularity
When the wave of intelligence and new energy brings huge imagination space to the automotive industry, in the face of increasingly congested urban roads and chaotic traffic conditions, flying cars, as an upward extension of traffic, have increasingly attracted the attention of the industry and capital. In this battle for a trillion-dollar market, we can not only see the old players in the field of flight such as airlines and aircraft research and development companies, but also find more new players who are facing the sky from the ground, including car companies, Internet technology companies and Internet travel companies.
Among them, toyota, GM, Geely as the representative of the car companies will naturally not let the flying car have a "variable" that may cause industry subversion to grow wantonly; Google, Tencent and other technology companies, also stimulated by Tesla's "technology car" success case, pay great attention to flying cars; and also have expectations for the field of Internet travel companies such as Uber, compared to the pure traffic moat, the technology moat contained in flying cars is obviously more attractive. In addition to the above three camps, airlines such as Boeing and Airbus are the fourth force in the field of flying cars, after all, flying is its own business, and the aviation power system required by flying cars has more or less their shadow existence.
As the track was gradually constructed, the smelling capital also began to show great interest in the field of flying cars. In the three months from September to November 2021 alone, Fengfei Technology, Volante Aviation, Xiaopeng Huitian, Weihang Airliner and other enterprises have received financing ranging from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of DOLLARs, of which Xiaopeng Huitian won 500 million US dollars in the A round of financing in October 2021, provided by the gorgeous investment team composed of IDG Capital, Sequoia Capital, Hillhouse Venture Capital, etc. The entry of massive funds has accelerated the growth of the entire flying car ecology.
According to the incomplete statistics of Yiou Automobile, as of now, the number of flying car companies in the world exceeds 160, mainly concentrated in China, the United States and Europe. Among them, a number of companies have landed on the stock exchange market. China's representative company, EHang Intelligent, was listed in December 2019. In September this year, the United States' Joby Aviation and Europe's Lilium Air also officially IPO, although they did not achieve profitability, but the market value is not low.
With the help of enterprises, institutions and capital, can flying cars really take off smoothly? The answer to this question is probably not so simple.
The dream of the car
Flying has always been a common dream of mankind, and the idea of flying cars has a long history. It wasn't until 2009 that flying cars really became a reality from 1917, when Ge Curtis, known as the father of flying cars, first demonstrated flying cars. In March of that year, the world's first flying car, the Transition, flew successfully for the first time. The flying car, launched by the American Company Trafoka, can be transformed from a two-seat road car to an airplane in 15 seconds at the push of a button.
Most of the early flying cars were inseparable from the runway, and the use of the scene was very limited, not so much a flying car, but rather an airplane that could be driven on the road. From the perspective of the application needs of flying cars, short-distance travel, vertical take-off and landing products are better choices. So at present, many companies are beginning to develop vertical take-off and landing flying cars that look like "drones". Compared to the real flying car concept, they are actually "eVTOL electric VTOL aircraft".
In 2017, the electric air taxi eVTOL developed and manufactured by German startup Volocopter is quite similar to a drone, with 18 twin propellers and a set of high-capacity batteries as a driver, which can be manipulated by a computer system or driven by a driver. Last year, the world's first approved flying car, Liberty, built by the Dutch PAL-V (which has not yet obtained ESA aviation certification, can only drive and cannot fly) is also a product with rotors.
The growth of the intelligent travel ecosystem
As a new means of transportation, if the flying car wants to meet the "ground running + sky flying", in addition to its own technological growth, the intelligent travel ecology of "the integration of heaven and earth" is an indispensable existence. For example, there is no ample take-off and landing space for flying cars on the road, and the airspace will not be open for it to fly freely. If used in suburbs or in small-populated parks, the scope of application is very limited, which makes owning a flying car destined to be a game for the rich, and has nothing to do with the general public.
Therefore, for flying cars to truly land, the key is to build an intelligent travel ecology that integrates "people-vehicles-environment". Under the intelligent travel ecology, the car is no longer a closed environment, but can be extended to a three-dimensional ecosystem such as entertainment, life, and travel. The convergence of multi-domain applications requires the existence of flying cars as similar to the universal interface in the Internet of Things. To meet this positioning, the growth of flying cars is inseparable from the advancement of the Internet of Things and the Internet of Vehicles; at the same time, in terms of driving, flying cars controlled by AI are obviously more reassuring than controlled by humans, which puts forward higher requirements for autonomous driving technology; and data exchange and collection, based on 5G and even 6G fast communication technology, is also the key.
▲The construction of intelligent travel ecology is crucial to the development of flying cars.
However, looking at the present, starting from the basic cargo flight is the first step in the landing of the flying car. Through cargo flight, we can accumulate flight and safety experience, and provide sufficient practice for the technology research and development, production and manufacture of flying cars, thus penetrating into the transportation, commercial and personal consumption markets.
A business model needs to be found
The future of flying cars is beautiful, but there is an urgent problem to be solved is how to find the right business model. Whether in the application scenarios of public transportation or personal commuting, people's demand for flying cars is nothing more than the application of three-dimensional space, bypassing complex traffic conditions on the ground and improving transportation efficiency. However, under the current conditions, the risk-reward of solving traffic problems through flight is pessimistic.
In the field of manned applications, flying cars face two choices: "flying" and "buying flying cars". Flying cars with a price of millions of dollars may be difficult to roll out in the terminal consumer market in the short term, and it is more in line with the actual situation to cooperate with flying car companies to provide "flying" services to enterprises and individuals through a similar form of "online car-hailing". For time-sensitive rather than price-sensitive businesses and individuals, such a model is obviously reasonable, but for the vast majority of end users, the cost of "flying" is still unbearable.
▲At present, the main form of flying cars is still a product with a rotor like eVTOL.
In the field of cargo, the pursuit of cost of commercial freight is more demanding. In theory, the use of drones to deliver express delivery can increase delivery efficiency by 70%. However, in the actual operation of drone delivery carried out by Amazon, after ARK Invest's calculation, the cost of a single piece of transportation is about 6 yuan, while the cost of manual delivery is 5 yuan per order. The freight road of flying cars in such an environment may not be easy to follow.
In addition to the lack of clarity in the monetization path of flying cars, the million-level price is even if it is a platform-based operation of the enterprise, I am afraid that few can afford it. Such a difficult business model, but still attracted a large number of enterprises and capital to participate, obviously in addition to the temptation of the trillion-level market, the more important thing is probably the temptation of the low-altitude transportation market in the future intelligent travel ecology.
The sword refers to low-altitude traffic flight
At present, no flying car in the world has obtained the airworthiness certification of the civil aviation department, except for the European Aviation Safety Agency and the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States on the airworthiness certification of the eVTOL project, the complete airworthiness certification and standard scheme have not yet been formed. China's civil aircraft apply for airworthiness permits, and under normal circumstances, they are promoted in the order of "no-load-carry-on-man". In the manned stage, it is necessary to obtain an airworthiness certificate to obtain an operating license, and subsequent commercialization also needs to obtain a business license. However, at this stage, it is still unknown whether the flying car can obtain an airworthiness certificate under the domestic airworthiness management regulations. And as far as the national policy is concerned, at present, many places are banned from flying drones, and the possibility of opening up low-altitude flights in policy is very small.
However, although the current space is relatively small, the relevant policies are still gradually improving. In January 2018, the Office of the National Air Traffic Control Commission organized the drafting of the Interim Regulations on the Flight Management of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Draft for Solicitation of Comments) and solicited public comments. In 2020, the General Office of the State Council issued the Circular on the Collection and Transfer of Some Opinions and Suggestions of the Seventh General Inspection of the State Council, which pointed out that the strategic layout and standard formulation of urban air traffic development strategies should be accelerated. It is recommended that the development of urban air traffic be included in the national strategy, relevant policy documents will be issued, relevant standards will be formulated, and the healthy development of the industry will be promoted. The Civil Aviation Administration of China also announced the list of 13 unmanned aerial vehicle test bases in 2020, distributed in Yanqing District of Beijing, Jinshan District of Shanghai, Hangzhou City of Zhejiang Province, Hezhou City of Guangxi Province, etc., which are divided into five categories according to positioning: urban scene, island scene, branch logistics, plateau environment operation and comprehensive application expansion.
The development of policies is a process of quantitative change to qualitative change, and with the increase of participants, the influx of capital, and the maturity of the market environment, the policy will gradually open up. In this process, the regulatory authorities will also solicit the opinions of enterprises, adapt to each other, and promote each other.
Written at the end: Is the end of the car building heaven?
Tesla, which uses technology to build cars, has become a leading enterprise in the field of new energy vehicles by itself, and as the first to eat crabs, Tesla has also fully enjoyed the dividends of the growth of the new energy vehicle market. For many enterprises and capitals that pay attention to and participate in the development of flying cars, becoming a "Tesla" in the field of flying cars is undoubtedly their goal. Because once the flying car market is successfully constructed, it means that a new trillion-level market door has been opened, and its dividends are naturally irresistible. However, whether it is the power needed by the car, the operating system, or the intelligent travel ecology around it, it is not quickly achievable, and there are still many things to do on the way to maturity.
Interestingly, Tesla isn't cold to flying cars, at least for now. Musk has said publicly: "If you like to fly above your house, and there are always a lot of cars flying around on it, of course, no problem." These cars are like drones that have been magnified 1,000 times, and they are full of noise, and the huge air currents when they land can even blow a lot of things away. ”
However, as long as people like it, maybe these will not be a problem.