Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Build trams, launch rockets, dig tunnels, release satellites. Carl Dietrich is one of the fans captured by Musk's entrepreneurial experience. He hopes to have a similar influence on human beings and believes that the Terrafugia he founded can become the next "Tesla".

Terrafugia, which means "off the ground", is an American flying car company. Carl Dietrich led a team to build the Transition, the first flying car to be licensed in the United States. Later, China's Geely acquired all the business and assets of Terrafugia.

Li Shufu believes that Terrafugia can change the way you travel in the future and lead the development of a new industry. Musk disagrees, complaining about the shortcomings of flying cars, but he has thought of applying rocket technology to cars to make Tesla make a short leap.

Tesla has not flown yet, but global sales of electric cars are taking off. With the promotion of global automobile electrification and intelligence, the technologies of "three electricity" and self-driving are becoming more and more advanced, and the flying automobile industry is speeding up. Although there are still institutional difficulties in landing flying cars, there is a growing enthusiasm for global participation.

More and more car companies are participating in the "air battle", including Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz in Germany, Toyota, Honda and Suzuki in Japan, Hyundai in South Korea, General Motors in the United States, and ultra-luxury brands such as Rolls-Royce and Aston Martin. China is represented by Geely and Xiaopeng.

Recently, Xiaopeng and Geely successively announced the latest development of the flying car business, in which the two-seater manned flying car traveler X2 independently developed by Xiaopeng Huitian has been granted a chartered flight license, and Geely Technology has entered a new stage of long-sky flight test verification work.

Since its birth more than 100 years ago, the "viscera" and "soul" of cars are undergoing electric and intelligent innovation, but the basic structure of their appearance has not been revolutionized. Will flying cars, as a new generation of way of travel, have now flown into the homes of ordinary people, or have they become toys for the rich?

1. Aircraft or car? After the birth of the first car and plane, humans began to explore the combination of the two.

In 1917, Curtis, a pioneer in the American aviation industry, built a machine called the Autoplane, which looked like a car with wings. Although no one has seen Autoplane soar, Curtis is still known as the "father of flying cars".

Henry Ford, the first car magnate, launched a 15-foot plane in 1926, nicknamed "Air Model T". That year, the concept of "flying car" appeared on the cover of popular Science magazine. Ford also asserted that the combination of aircraft and cars will come.

For many years since then, human beings have never stopped developing flying cars, and their designs have emerged one after another, but they have never been really successful, and some people have even unfortunately given their lives here.

From Curtis, in the first 100 years of the development of flying cars, thanks to advanced automobile and aviation technology, the United States has long been a hot land for flying cars, especially after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) adjusted its policies on flight licenses and aircraft models, Silicon Valley gave birth to a number of flying car start-ups, including Terrafugia.

With the first flight of the Transition in 2009, flying cars began to enter the public eye, no longer simply regarded as "geek behavior", attracting venture capital from Internet giants, while established airlines and many car companies joined the battlefield.

By 2020, most of the flying cars tested or exhibited are "cars + wings or propellers", which belong to land and air amphibious forms that can run and fly, in line with Volkswagen's primary setting for flying cars.

As Zhang Yangjun, a professor at the School of vehicles and Transportation at Tsinghua University and China's first winner of the Wright Brothers Medal, said: flying cars are not airplanes running, but cars flying.

Of course, there are "non-mainstream" flying cars, such as Toyota's 2017-funded Cartivator, which the team designed is more like a super-large drone that seems to have little to do with the car.

In fact, Toyota applied for a patent related to flying cars as early as 2014, and invested twice in Joby, an American flying car company, whose products have no sign of cars.

Cartivator later changed its name to SkyDrive and is now the largest flying car company in Japan. Last March, Japan's Suzuki announced a cooperation with SkyDrive in technology development and mass production.

With the emergence of electric and intelligent technology, flying vehicles have changed from fuel-fueled flying vehicles to intelligent electric flying vehicles, coupled with the rise of the concept of "urban air traffic", "non-mainstream" has gradually become the mainstream.

"at this time, the concept of flying vehicles has changed from land and air amphibious vehicles in the early narrow sense to electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles facing urban air traffic and with certain loads and range, which we call electric flying vehicles eVTOL (electrical Vertical Take-off and Landing)." Zhang Yangjun said.

Geely is the first Chinese car company to join the board of flying cars. In 2017, Geely acquired Terrafugia and renamed it "Tai Li Flying car". Its generation can run and fly, but later products put more emphasis on flight attributes and no longer have land travel functions, all of which have become eVTOL. Volkswagen Group, Mercedes-Benz Group and many other foreign car companies also choose the eVTOL route, and now people in the industry generally refer to flying cars as eVTOL.

Xiaopeng Huitian, on the contrary, its previous generations of models are eVTOL, while the new model is "back to the original starting point", the result has been complained as a "stitching monster" between planes and cars. Xiaopeng Huitian believes that it will take decades for urban air travel to mature, and there is uncertainty in market demand, so Xiaopeng Huitian is essentially building cars.

At present, there is no final conclusion on the route dispute between "aircraft" and "cars". The "White Paper on the Development of Flying vehicles," which is being jointly compiled by many agencies, classifies eVTOL and amphibious vehicles as flying vehicles.

2. Why do car companies engage in "air combat"? as mentioned earlier, eVTOL is not only the mainstream route of flying vehicles, but also belongs to the category of aviation. It is natural for aviation enterprises to get involved. Why do car companies join in "air combat"?.

The car company is "not doing its job", and skeptics say it is nothing more than a "human setting" of a "high-end technology company", just like Musk building trams, launching rockets, digging tunnels, releasing satellites, and absorbing countless fans. Such an argument is inevitably suspected of speculating, and it is not the only logic.

In fact, behind the dispute over the route of flying cars, there are also differences in business models.

Xiaopeng's plan is to use flying cars to cut into the luxury car market, not necessarily luxurious, but expensive is certain, in short, Xiaopeng wants to sell more expensive cars to individual consumers, taking the ToC. In addition, he Xiaopeng also said that he wants to accumulate technology by building flying cars in order to feed Xiaopeng cars.

To put it bluntly, Xiaopeng entered the flying car out of the consideration of the main car industry, which can be regarded as an exception among car companies, because other car companies are all focused on the "next generation travel mode", that is, "urban air traffic". The business model is ToB, not selling "cars", but providing services.

Joby's business plan is not to sell flying cars to consumers, but to set up an airline to operate. Yihang Intelligence, China's first listed flying car company, has also begun to switch from ToC to ToB in an attempt to become an operator.

In November 2018, Roland Berger released "Urban Air Traffic-the rise of a New Mode of Transportation", predicting that by 2050, nearly 100000 flying vehicles will be used in air taxis, airport buses and intercity transport services worldwide. In the same year, Morgan Stanley released a report on the air traffic industry, predicting a market size of $1.5 trillion.

Xiang Changle, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, pointed out at the 2022 Global Smart vehicle Industry Summit hosted by the China Electric vehicle Association that the contradiction between urban road network construction and motor vehicle growth is prominent. the growth rate of car ownership is much higher than that of urban road resources, and urban development is faced with traffic congestion and emission control difficulties. In November last year, the team led by Xiang Changle released the world's first manned two-seater intelligent flying car.

Urban traffic congestion is a difficult problem in two-dimensional space. Human beings have built the subway "downward", and the "upward" overpass is essentially an extension of the ground, while flying cars belong to the product of three-dimensional space, which is "dimensional management" for traffic jams.

Volkswagen also refers to "the next generation of travel". In July 2022, Volkswagen China launched its first eVTOL prototype, the V.MO, marking the official debut of Volkswagen Flying cars. Volkswagen says it is important to explore next-generation mobile travel solutions represented by urban air traffic, and believes that this area has great potential and will become an important market segment for Volkswagen.

The one who really caught fire with the concept of "urban air traffic" is the Internet travel company Uber, which proposed the "Uber Elevate" urban air taxi program in 2016, which "added fuel" to the global eVTOL wave.

Uber originally planned to start air travel in parts of the United States this year, but by the end of 2020, Uber sold Uber Elevate to Joby as an investment in Joby in order to cut costs.

The concept is very good, "realization" is far away. Zhang Yangjun judged that flying cars will mainly be in early commercial demonstration operation before 2030, and gradually enter the era of commercial operation of flying vehicles from 2030 to 2050, and only after 2050 can we usher in the era of urban air traffic development.

I don't know how many people can make it to 2050?

3. "overtaking in the air" flying cars have been explored for a hundred years, but they have not yet formed a mature format, but various signs show that flying cars are at the forefront of scientific and technological competition, indicating a path of traffic revolution in the future.

As an extension of new energy vehicles in the aviation direction, although flying vehicles started early in Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea, it is gratifying that the development of flying vehicles in China has reached a level and is expected to achieve "overtaking in the same way" in the air. this is mainly due to the strength of China's new energy vehicle industry chain, especially the state's encouragement of forward-looking technological innovation.

China's airspace control has always been strict, and it was not until 2014 that the country began to implement the reform of low-altitude flight control; in 2018, the interim regulations on the Flight Management of Unmanned aerial vehicles (draft for soliciting opinions) was issued, laying the foundation for the airworthiness certification of flying vehicles; and in January 2019, the guidance on Airworthiness Accreditation of UAV based on operational risk was issued, saying that pilot airworthiness certification had been established in Ehang Intelligence and other enterprises.

By contrast, Joby, an American flying car company, applied for airworthiness certification from the Federal Aviation Administration in 2018. Airworthiness certification is an action that must be completed before all aircraft companies are commercialized, in short, to get the safety approval of the civil aviation department. In the industry, it is extremely difficult to pass airworthiness certification, and Joby has not yet completed the review.

In June 2020, the Ministry of Land and Infrastructure of South Korea issued the urban air traffic planning plan; in July, the Japanese government released the growth Strategy follow-up Plan. Japan and South Korea have planned the commercialization of flying cars at the national level, which has stimulated China to speed up its actions.

In November of the same year, the Supervision and Inspection Office of the General Office of the State Council said bluntly that the relevant domestic strategic research lags behind, policies, regulations and industry standards are still in a blank state, and enterprises are faced with problems such as flight approval, flight permit, market launch and so on. In the same year, the Civil Aviation Administration accepted the application for EH216 airworthiness certification of Yihang.

In April of the following year, the Central South Bureau of the Civil Aviation Administration announced that a working group on model qualification of Ehang EH216 manned UAV project had been set up; in December, the Civil Aviation Administration of China issued the "Special conditions for Ehang EH216-S unmanned aircraft system (draft for soliciting opinions)", marking the prelude to Ehang's entry into airworthiness certification.

The Airworthiness Accreditation Office of the Central South Bureau of the Civil Aviation Administration said that the bureau will give flying automobile companies more flexibility and speed up the formulation of airworthiness certification standards. "the international development of this field is very fast, and we do not want the efficiency of the government to affect the development of the industry."

In fact, Joby of the United States, Archer, and Lilium of Germany have all completed the program and entered the testing stage, but Ehang's breakthrough is that this is the world's first special condition for the certification of manned unmanned aircraft. Joby, Archer, and Lilium all submit certificates for manned airworthiness.

People in the Chinese industry generally believe that China's move is not only in the face of competition, but also intended to "overtake". Of course, the premise of "overtaking" is that Yihang finally passed the airworthiness certification. So far, no flying car has been certified in the world, whether it is "manned" or "unmanned". Compared with Yihang, Geely and Xiaopeng still have a long way to go.

In addition, in terms of eVTOL take-off and landing site construction standards, the United States and Europe issued relevant plans in February and March 2022 respectively. China is not lagging behind. In August of the same year, China released the "Roadmap for the Development of Civil unmanned Aviation V1.0 (draft for soliciting opinions)", proposing to build an experimental unmanned flying car take-off and landing site by 2025.

Although China's traditional aviation field lags behind developed countries, the Civil Aviation Administration of China hopes to keep pace with the world in terms of new business type's supervision of flying cars. As Ma Zhigang, deputy director of the Airport Department of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said at a public event, "Vertical take-off and landing technology has built a new track for us, with both challenges and opportunities. If we do not take the initiative to plan the layout, we will lose the voice of future international standards and rules."

[full text reference]

[1] "Strategic significance and Future Vision of the Development of Flying vehicles", Zhang Yangjun

[2] "is Geely Daimler's joint venture air taxi coming? "Caixin

[3] "Flying cars, how to fly", Guangming Daily

[4] "Flying cars, it is easy for heaven to land but difficult to land", China Newsweek

[5] "is the flying car in the trillion-dollar market a tuyere or a sinkhole? ", WSJ Chinese version

[6] "how far is the flying car airworthiness certification ice-breaking air taxi?", Caixin Weekly

[7] can the capital rush "flying cars" land? Financial Magazine

[8] can Chinese flying cars overtake at corners according to the airworthiness standard of "self-driving"? China Business Daily

[9] "Ma Zhigang: promoting the Integrated Development of General Airport and Urban Air Traffic", China Civil Aviation Network

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: che Bai think Tank (ID:EV100_Plus), author: Qin Haiqing

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