Reporter | Tang Jun
There is a well-known axiom of line segments in mathematics, that is, "between two points, the line segment is the shortest". In the human mode of transportation, only flying is the easiest to achieve the shortest straight-line distance between two points.
After civilian aircraft and helicopters, flying cars are seen as the next generation of mass air transportation. At present, China, the United States, and Europe are actively developing flying cars, and some regions have opened pilots, and some companies have been listed. But it will take time for flying cars to truly enter public life.
Enterprises scramble to develop "flying cars"
As the name suggests, flying cars can fly both in the air and on the ground, but most of the products currently pay more attention to the flight function, almost abandoning the ground driving function. Flying cars that can take off and land vertically like helicopters are seen as the next generation of disruptive personal vehicles.
The idea of combining airplanes and cars was proposed more than 100 years ago, but it wasn't until March 2009 that the world's first flying car, the Transition, flew successfully for the first time. In recent years, more and more developers of flying cars have been developed, including aviation manufacturers, traditional car companies, start-up companies, Internet technology companies, etc. have joined the ranks of exploration, and new products have continued to emerge.
Companies involved in the development of flying cars are mainly concentrated in Places such as China, the United States and Europe, including Snålvak's AeroMobil, Germany's Lilium and Velocopter, The United States' Kitty Hawk, Archer and Joby, the United Kingdom's Vetical and VRCO, the Netherlands' PAL-V, China's EHang and Xiaopeng and other emerging companies, as well as traditional car companies and aviation companies such as Airbus, Audi, Geely and Toyota.
The technical routes are different, and the shape of the flying cars developed by various companies is also different.
Image courtesy of Lilium's website
Image from the PAL-V website
The picture is from the official website of Xiaopeng
The picture is from the official website of EHang
Although these companies have produced their own flying cars, they are all in pilot flight status, and there is no official commercial flight route in the world.
The market has not been opened, capital has come first, and a number of companies have been listed in the "flying car" industry. At the end of 2019, EHang was listed on the U.S. stock market, becoming the world's first flying car company to go public. Companies such as Archer and Joy in the United States, Lilium in Germany, and Vertical in the United Kingdom have also successfully listed through SPAC (that is, backdoor).
Yu Zhanfu, a global partner at Roland Berger Consulting, analyzed the interface news, and at present, the cutting-edge enterprises that develop flying cars are still mainly in Europe and the United States, and European companies are the most active. Chinese companies also entered the market relatively early, and there is no obvious time difference between products and international products, and they also belong to the first echelon.
According to Morgan Stanley's forecast report, the flying automotive industry will form a global market size of $300 billion by 2030 and reach $1.5 trillion by 2040.
Although the flying car market is so active, to officially start commercial flight, it still faces constraints from technology, policy and operational scenarios.
The "resistance" of flight
Under the existing technical conditions, flying cars are not a problem, but how far they can fly is a problem.
Flying cars generally provide energy through batteries, due to the need to overcome their own gravity in the air, can not be unlimited superposition of batteries, resulting in a flying car's endurance time is generally short, such as EHang 216 full power can fly 15-40 minutes, and then need to spend a long time charging.
Whether a flying car can fly farther depends on whether the battery technology will make a breakthrough, or learn from the power exchange mode of some new energy vehicles and design it into a quickly removable battery. Only after the endurance is solved, there are more operational scenarios to imagine.
Noise is also a problem. The propeller of a flying car produces high decibel noise when working, and although noise reduction can be achieved inside the aircraft through sound insulation materials, it is possible to affect city dwellers outside the aircraft when flying at low altitude.
In terms of safety, although the current pilot flight has not yet had a major accident, the safety of the "flying car" still needs to be further confirmed. Chinese government departments attach great importance to aviation safety, and only aircraft that ensure absolute safety can be allowed to take off.
At the non-technical level, flying cars also face policy issues such as flight-suitability certification, urban airspace management, air driving rules, and division of accident liability, as well as market challenges such as air traffic infrastructure, operating models, economic costs, and user experience.
In February, the Civil Aviation Administration of China issued the "Special Conditions for EHang EH216-S Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System", which does not mean that EHang EH216-S has achieved airworthiness certification, but has set special conditions for airworthiness approval, and when these conditions are met, airworthiness certification can be achieved.
The condition mentions that the aircraft of the EH216-S unmanned aerial vehicle system are expected to fly in low-altitude isolated airspace, mainly for commercial passenger operations in urban air traffic environments.
Interestingly, on April 21, the Society of Automotive Engineers of China said that it would set up a working group on flying cars and start the preparation of a white paper on flying cars.
Both the civil aviation authorities and automobile associations are involved, and who is in charge of flying cars is still in a vague area. Yu Zhanfu believes that dialogue and coordination should be strengthened among various departments to clearly define the regulatory boundaries of flying cars.
Yu Zhanfu believes that it is more appropriate to incorporate flying cars into the management of the civil aviation system. According to common sense, aircraft in the air involve the management of airspace and flight rules, and the civil aviation department has a theoretical basis and practical experience, but the road system has never involved these aspects.
When will it take off
At present, EHang has carried out air tours or short-distance air traffic trial operations at designated locations in Guangzhou, Hezhou, Shenzhen, Zhaoqing and other cities. EHang said that as of the end of November 2021, EHang's 216 series autonomous vehicles have completed more than 20,000 safe test flights.
EHang is still in a state of loss, in 2021 the company recorded revenue of 56.8 million yuan, down 68.5% year-on-year, a net loss of 320 million yuan, the loss of 241.1% year-on-year. Only by achieving formal commercial operation can EHang stop losses.
Professor Zhang Yangjun of tsinghua university's School of Vehicles and Vehicles believes that "first carrying objects and then carrying people" is a more feasible commercialization path for flying cars. You can accumulate experience through the carrier first, carry out technical iteration, data accumulation, safety verification and other work, and then transition to manned after maturity. The Yangtze River Delta and the Greater Bay Area may be the first to start experimenting with flying car operations, because these two regions have active economies and objective needs.
Roland Berger's Yu Zhanfu believes that flying cars will initially be piloted in sparsely populated places, and when safety is fully recognized, they will gradually migrate to densely populated places.
At the end of March this year, EHang said on the earnings call that it plans to launch flying car air sightseeing services in some tourist attractions in China after the products have obtained airworthiness certification from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, which will be launched as early as Zhaoqing in Guangdong and Guigang in Guangxi.
Government departments are encouraging for flying cars. In March this year, the Ministry of Communications issued the "Outline of the Medium- and Long-term Development Plan for Scientific and Technological Innovation in the Field of Transportation (2021-2035)", which mentioned the deployment of flying vehicle research and development, breakthroughs in the integration of aircraft and automobiles, free switching between flight and ground driving and other technologies, in order to seize the opportunity of cutting-edge equipment.
But overall, flying cars are still in the early stages of moving from research and exploration to commercial application. He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, has said that it will achieve mass production of its flying cars by 2024 and control the price within 1 million yuan.
British aviation giant Rolls-Royce released a report in February that countries in the Asia-Pacific region will achieve urban air mobility services by 2030, and the Asia-Pacific region is expected to have more than 1,000 vertical take-off and landing electric aircraft by 2030.
Zhang Yangjun believes that before 2030, flying cars are mainly early commercial demonstration operations; from 2030 to 2050, they will gradually enter the era of commercial operation of flying cars; after 2050, they will usher in the era of urban air traffic development.