Xpeng opens his technological bag of tricks and pulls out a flying car, among other things. It doesn’t stop there, the Chinese brand that also has ambitions to conquer the European car market shows, among other things, a new charging network and … robot animals.
Flying cars – especially on paper – come in all shapes and sizes. The Dutch PAL-V offers a colossus in the form of the Liverty that looks like a combination of a car and a helicopter that you can actually buy and not long ago Hyundai showed a flying piece of technology that looked more like a drone. The Chinese Xpeng presented its own flying car during its Tech Day.
xpeng
For a so-called flying car, the creation of Xpeng is surprisingly similar to a full-fledged car. The creation, developed together with partner HT Aero, resembles a futuristic supercar, but has extendable arms on both sides with rotor blades mounted on it. Xpeng will not release more information, except that the colossus should go on sale in 2024.
But there’s more. Xpeng proposes Xpilot 3.5 and 4.0. Xpilot 3.5 and 4.0, comprehensive semi-autonomous driving systems, the latter of which should enable ‘location to location’ driving. Together with the name of the system, this seems to point to software and hardware that makes level 4 autonomous driving possible. In 2023, the system is to be used in Xpeng cars. Xpeng also pulls a charging network with what it calls ‘superchargers’ from the top hat, a system with which you should be able to charge with a charging capacity of up to 480 kW. Xpeng currently has 1,648 charging stations in its home country in China.
Xpeng proves that new technology can also be a bit scary with a bunch of robot animals that, although they look most like hell dogs straight out of your last nightmare, are really described as ‘ponies’. The robot critters can independently find their way through your house, recognize your voice and face and, according to Xpeng, are part of a future ‘smart mobility ecosystem’. Xpeng will not release further information about the robots.
Xpeng has the ambition to conquer the European market and thus joins an ever-growing line of Chinese manufacturers and brands that are planning to do so. We mention Seres, BYD, Nio, Byton, Great Wall and Hongqi, but we are far from there. In the Netherlands you can walk into the showrooms of the Chinese MG for some time and Aiways, Maxus and the Volvo affiliated Lynk & Co and Polestar are also active here.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl