Xiaopeng is going to sell a car that can go to the sky

Author | Wang Xiaojuan

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

At last year's XPeng Technology Day, XPeng released a short film showing a flying car calmly driving out from the back of a car in a vast wilderness, flying towards the distance. This is XPeng's future product, the split-type flying car "Land Aircraft Carrier".

Less than a year later, this "Land Aircraft Carrier" officially made its debut.

On September 3rd, the "Land Aircraft Carrier" made its first appearance in Guangzhou and conducted a public test flight, showcasing the application scenarios of flying cars.

XPeng Huitian stated that this "Land Aircraft Carrier" will make its first public manned flight at the "China (Zhuhai) Air Show" in November this year, and will participate in the Guangzhou International Auto Show in November. At the same time, it is planned to start pre-sales by the end of this year.

Zhao Deli, the founder and CEO of XPeng Huitian, introduced, "The Huangpu factory of the company is planned to be completed on July 31 next year, and the first PT car (first batch of test cars) will be offline. Mass deliveries are expected to start in 2026, with prices estimated not to exceed 2 million yuan."

The official debut of the "Land Aircraft Carrier" is expected to take XPeng Huitian to new heights.

Perhaps in the near future, in addition to projects such as going to Antarctica and climbing Mount Everest, experiencing the "Land Aircraft Carrier" will become a new trend in entertainment.

In Zhao Deli's view, there are currently no competitors in this market. Compared to helicopters, flying cars have lower thresholds in terms of price and driving difficulty.

He believes that looking up can lead to success. Currently, with hundreds of units sold each month, the future of flying cars should be quite promising. "If there are 10,000 units sold each year, the revenue will be in the billions."

However, the journey for Zhao Deli and XPeng Huitian has not been easy. Before entering the field of low-altitude aircraft, Zhao Deli worked as a laborer, real estate agent, and also ran restaurants and a model aircraft company.

In 2013, relying on the over 20 million yuan earned from selling model aircraft, Zhao Deli established Huitian Technology in Dongguan to start developing low-altitude manned aircraft. However, the progress that followed was not smooth. Bearing the label of "amateur scientist," Zhao Deli, with a non-professional background and lack of relevant resources, found it difficult to gain the trust of investors.

At the most difficult times, the team was reduced to only two people. Zhao Deli set a goal for himself, to work until 2018, and if it still couldn't take off, he would give up. Finally, his flying motorcycle successfully flew in 2018, and in 2019, he created a two-seater version that can carry passengers.

Later, he shared this experience on social media, gaining attention from the media and attracting some investors.

Becoming XPeng Huitian happened in 2020, which was also a crucial financing event.

At that time, XPeng Motors Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng saw Zhao Deli's flying motorcycle and showed strong interest. In September of that year, Huitian Technology, led by Zhao Deli, officially became part of XPeng's ecosystem - XPeng Huitian. He Xiaopeng became the major shareholder and chairman, while Zhao Deli became the president.

With He Xiaopeng joining, Zhao Deli finally overcame the challenge of "fundraising," and XPeng Huitian entered a path of development.

In 2021, XPeng Huitian completed a super $500 million Series A financing, setting a record for the largest single financing in the field of low-altitude manned aircraft in Asia. In June 2022, XPeng Huitian completed a Series A+ financing, but did not disclose the amount of financing In August this year, XPeng Huitian received another 1 billion RMB investment, completed Series B1 financing, and simultaneously initiated Series B2 financing.

With continuous influx of funding, XPeng Huitian has already secured a significant number of orders. As of now, XPeng Huitian has accumulated over 1,000 pre-orders and has intentions to purchase over 3,000 units.

The rapid development of XPeng Huitian is inseparable from policy support. In the past two years, the low-altitude economy has begun to erupt intensively and has received support from local governments.

In places like Shenzhen, many low-altitude devices are already in operation, such as flying robots for food delivery and courier services. Shenzhen has announced plans to build a low-altitude take-off and landing network consisting of helicopter/eVTOL passenger transport, logistics transport, community delivery, and public governance services. By the end of next year, they plan to establish over 1,000 low-altitude aircraft take-off and landing platforms.

According to the research data released by the CCID Research Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in the "China Low-Altitude Economy Development Research Report (2024)", the scale of China's low-altitude economy reached 505.95 billion RMB in 2023, with a growth rate of 33.8%. It is expected that by 2026, the scale of the low-altitude economy will exceed one trillion RMB.

This has provided further development opportunities for enterprises like XPeng Huitian that have been exploring this path for over a decade.

In addition to XPeng Huitian, Fengfei Aviation recently received exclusive investment of hundreds of millions of US dollars from CATL, further proving that the low-altitude industry is booming. Since 2024, there have been over 10 financing events in the domestic eVTOL field.

In He Xiaopeng's vision, future urban travel should be autonomous driving, short-distance transportation between cities should be low-altitude flights, and short-distance service tools should be robots. Based on this, XPeng is currently focusing on three directions: autonomous driving, flying cars, and humanoid robots.

As XPeng Huitian's "land aircraft carrier" is about to go on sale, humanity's vision for future travel is transitioning from dreams to reality