GAC Group Enters Flying Car Sector
On July 25, Time Weekly quoted insiders of GAC Group as saying that the Chinese auto giant is now developing flying cars. This represents an important measure for the transformation of GAC as a traditional car company.
Zhang Fan, the Associate Dean of GAC’s R&D Center, said in an interview with Time Finance that GAC is a large corporation that is determined to become an international first-class automobile enterprise, and will definitely follow the trend of automobile development closely. “The center provides a wide range of future travel technologies and conducts research on multiple travel scenarios to keep track of trends,” said Zhang.
According to Chinese recruitment website Liepin, the GAC R&D Center is recruiting engineers in related fields, including aircraft structural design engineers, aircraft landing gear design engineers, aircraft measurement and control engineers, and aircraft strength simulation engineers. The monthly salary ranges from 20,000 yuan to 40,000 yuan ($2,959 – 5,918).
According to the forecast of Roland Berger, by 2025, 3,000 flying cars will be put into use, and then their number will increase exponentially. By 2050, nearly 100,000 flying cars will be put into use worldwide. Morgan Stanley also released a blue book on the topic, saying that the industrial scale of urban air traffic globally will reach $1.5 trillion in 2040.
Throughout the past two years, many flying car startups have gained the favor of capital markets, and TCab Tech, Volante and AutoFlight all have completed large-scale financing. XPeng and Geely are the more famous car companies in the field of flying cars. XPeng Aeroht, a flying car company owned by Xpeng Motors, has started to engage in the field of manned aircraft in 2013. Meanwhile, Geely acquired Terrafugia, a US flying car startup, in 2017.
SEE ALSO: XPeng Aeroht Opens New Trial Production Factory
China is actively promoting the development of the flying car industry. On January 24 this year, the country’s Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Science and Technology jointly issued a document to strengthen the car, civil aircraft, ships and other equipment power transmission system research, deployment of flying car R&D, breakthroughs in the integration of aircraft and cars, flight and ground driving free switching and other technologies.
