Morgan Stanley predicts that the flying car market will reach $320 billion by 2030.
Compared with traditional cars and aircrafts, eVTOL has gradually materialized, featuring zero emission, low cost, point-to-point low-altitude flight (short mobility time without geographical restrictions), vertical take-off and landing, land and aerial applications. For example, EHang 216 with multi-rotor electric vertical take-off and landing is used as an ambulance in the coronavirus crisis.
Investors favor urban air mobility (UAM). The total financing of the three unicorns exceeds $1.5 billion
By 2030, 60% of the population will migrate into cities, which may pose enormous pressure on urban ground transportation. By then, the demand for urban aerial short-distance mobility will increase significantly.
Flying cars have been favored by many investors due to the broad application prospects. Larry Page, cofounder and CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, was among the first to recognize their potentials, personally funding three companies, Zee Aero, Opener and Kitty Hawk. Particularly, Sebastian Thrun, Google’s self-driving team founder turned CEO of flying vehicle startup Kitty Hawk. This indicates the trend of the mobility market: the future transportation may develop in the sky.
Among the three flying car unicorns, Joby Aviation is from the United States, Volocopter and Lilium are from Germany. Joby Aviation has raised the overwhelming USD820 million. Volocopter has announced the signing of their Series D funding round, and its investors include Geely, Daimler, Geely, Daimler, DB Schenker, Intel Capital, etc.
Currently, 5 flying car models have been mass-produced. Electrification and autonomous driving are the mainstream
American companies (accounting for nearly 50%) are the most enthusiastic about developing flying cars, followed by Chinese companies. Many companies aim to materialize flying cars around 2025. Five flying car projects have seen mass production, and 38% have realized automation.
Automotive technology and aviation technology are merging with each other. Benefiting from the development of automotive electrification, flying cars have a progress in endurance. For example, Airbus Vahana eVTOL has a range of up to 50 kilometers, which basically enables urban short-distance mobility.
Amid many participants, Geely, Xpeng, Hyundai and other OEMs have deployed the market
Currently, traditional airlines such as Boeing, Airbus, Bell, etc. have embarked on flying car projects. Technology companies follow suit. For example, Uber has established Uber Elevate to develop flying taxis with 9 partners including Embraer, Aurora Flight Sciences, Jaunt Air Mobility, etc.
The CEO of the OEM Xpeng recently stated that it will build flying cars in 2021. Geely completed its acquisition of the US flying-car startup Terrafugia, and invested in Volocopter, a German electric flying taxi R&D company, demonstrating its ambition to deploy UAM. Recently, Transition (TF-1), a subsidiary of Geely, obtained the world’s first special airworthiness certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), USA.
The United States, Germany, China, South Korea, Japan and many other countries have paid attention to the concept of flying cars, and many of them have formulated UAM development plans. Affected by favorable policies, insufficient urban road traffic space, autonomous driving and the development of 5G communication technology, flying cars are expected to become an important way of smart mobility in the future.
