Flying cars are about to take off—we mean it this time

When Xpeng Aeroht, an offshoot of Chinese EV startup Xpeng, showed its flying concept car at the Bangkok auto show last year, it turned heads. Now the Chinese startup is ready to take to the skies.

The company’s “Land Aircraft Carrier” is expected to transition from prototype to actual vehicle in the coming months. At CES, the company said it plans to begin mass production this year, with deliveries of the “modular flying car” (which is part flying machine and part SUV) beginning in 2026.

The Land Aircraft Carrier, which won’t launch in the U.S. anytime soon due to a host of regulatory reasons, is an apt name for the vehicle. It’s a three-axle, electric powered van that houses a two-seat deployable flying car in, for lack of a better word, its trunk. That aircraft can either be piloted or flown as a drone via remote control.

It sounds odd and it looks like a Humvee giving birth to a baby helicopter in person, but the company says it has already received 3,000 pre-orders in China for the vehicle, which costs about $300,000 in U.S. dollars. Xpeng will see how sales of the vehicle go in its home market before considering an expansion to other territories.

Flying cars have been the stuff of science fiction dreams for years. They offer the hope of avoiding gridlock and rush hour congestion as well as the dream of getting to and from places at a much quicker pace. From Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to Back to the Future, generations have grown up hoping they’re just a few years away.

In recent years, they’ve become more likely, with big corporations investing hundreds of millions of dollars into them (such as Toyota’s $500 million buy in to Joby last October). Beyond the reduced stress they promise, flying cars could also reduce air pollution and be valuable tools for emergency response providers. 

The vehicle Xpeng is proposing likely isn’t quite what they had in mind, to be clear.

The flying car portion of the vehicle, a six-rotor eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) vehicle, has foldable arms and blades, which allow it to be stored in the “mothership,” Xpeng’s name for the more traditional part of the combination (which seats up to four people, even with the eVTOL aboard).

And yes, owners will need to become flight certified if they want to pilot it themselves—but the controls are minimal, consisting of a one-handed joystick for maneuvering, automated flight systems, and backup button controls on a center console.

Xpeng is grabbing the spotlight at CES with the Land Aircraft Carrier, but the real test of flying cars will come with air taxis.

United Airlines is betting big on the concept, investing $10 million last August in Archer Aviation, a California-based maker of flying taxis, and $15 million in Brazil’s Eve Air Mobility, where it ordered 200 of the four-passenger vehicles and an option to buy 200 more. Those are expected to be delivered next year. Delta, meanwhile, has made a $60 million investment in Joby—and can increase that to $200 million if it chooses to. Airbus, meanwhile, is working on its own eVTOL.

These VTOLs are much more likely to launch in the U.S. before Xpeng’s vehicle. The vision is to use them to transport customers around cities to hub airports, letting people bypass crowded highways (something Delta highlighted in its CES keynote speech Tuesday).

The Federal Aviation Administration has not yet cleared the vehicles to carry passengers, but is in the process of determining how to integrate them with existing flight patterns (most flights are expected to take place between 2,000 and 3,000 feet above ground level) and requirements for pilots.

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