XPeng Aeroht Obtains $827M Bank Credit to Research Flying Cars
On November 8, XPeng Aeroht, a flying car company owned by XPeng, reached a strategic partnership with four banks which will jointly provide credit lines totaling 6 billion yuan ($827 million) to the company to support its R&D and manufacturing of flying cars.
He Xiaopeng, chairman of XPeng Aeroht, said that the achievement of this strategic cooperation strongly supports the company to increase its capital investment in research and development and gradually begin construction of a supply chain and manufacturing base.
On October 10 this year, XPeng Aeroht’s flying car model, the X2, made its first overseas public flight in Dubai. The X2 adopts an enclosed cockpit for the first time, taking into account high-efficiency aerodynamics during flight. In order to achieve its lightweight, the X2 employs a carbon fiber structure.
At present, the X2 is equipped with two driving modes – manual driving and automatic driving. During the automatic flight of X2, passengers can have a safe and intelligent flight experience only by simple operations such as one-button start, return and landing.
During the XPeng Tech Day held on October 24, XPeng Aeroht released the latest R&D progress of the world’s first electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) car model with an internal code of X3, including a video of the successful maiden flight of the prototype.
The flying car adopts a folding arm storage system, which supports switching between land and flight modes. In the folded state, its size is equivalent to that of a conventional car, and it can drive freely on an open road. Compared with last year’s concept model, the latest design adopts distributed multi-rotors.
On October 19, 2021, XPeng Aeroht completed the round A financing of more than $500 million, which was jointly led by IDG Capital, 5Y Capital, and XPeng, followed by well-known funds such as Sequoia Capital, Eastern Bell Capital, Hillhouse Capital and Yunfeng Capital, making it the largest round A financing in the global flying automobile industry. The strategic cooperation with the four banks and the credit of 6 billion yuan are another peak of financing of XPeng Aeroht.
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Earlier, Zhao Deli, founder of XPeng Aeroht, revealed that in the actual use of flying cars, driving on the ground accounts for about 90% of the time. Further, flying cars will be mass-produced in 2024 and will retail for about 1 million yuan. A person close to XPeng thinks that according to XPeng Aeroht’s plan, the mass-production version of flying cars will use the wild or scenic airspace far away from the city, and the target customers are similar to supercar owners.
The market prospect of flying cars is optimistic. Morgan Stanley predicted that the market size of flying cars will reach $300 billion by 2030 and $1.5 trillion by 2040, and China is expected to become the largest urban air mobility market in the world.
