XPENG Hopes To Sell 10,000 Van+Quadcopters ($276,000) A Year

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XPENG has gone a slightly different route with its electric aircraft than others inching into this space. It has developed a 2-person quadcopter drone that fits inside of a 6-wheeled electric van. It makes me think of the Transformers, even though it’s not really that. You can watch the process on Weibo here and here. It looks cool, fun. I might buy one if I made $300,000 a week. But at a price of 2 million yuan ($276,000), well, it’s not on my Christmas list.

It’s also not going to shake up the world and cut major levels of emissions at that kind of pricing, and seemingly being just a toy for the rich.

Interestingly, though, Xpeng reportedly thinks it is going to be able to sell 10,000 units of this “land aircraft carrier” per year. Hmm, are there that many billionaires or centimillionaires looking for that kind of toy?

The good news is that Xpeng just provided at completely unmanned demo of the quadcopter at the Zhuhai Air Show, a popular aviation conference in Chinese. You can view a video of the unmanned flight here.

The company also announced it had received (or gotten to?) 2,000 orders for the electric quadcopter plus van at the air show, which it called “the largest order volume in the global flying car industry to date.” And that’s without pre-orders for individual users. XPENG Huitian is opening public pre-orders for individual owners in December.

Regarding that 10,000 units/year target, the company plans to reach that production capacity by the end of next year, and then plans to begin deliveries in 2026. Is this really going to happen?

It may not be what people envisioned when they started dreaming of flying cars. It’s not a flying car. But, hey, it’s something special. It could definitely feature in a James Bond film.