Watch Video: Beijing Announces “Ambitious eVTOL Route Plans and XPENG Flight Trials”

Xpeng Aero­ht post­ed a video on ‘X’ this week of its first flight demon­stra­tions in the Bei­jing-Tian­jin-Hebei region of the X2 eVTOL dur­ing the ‘Lang­fang Inter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic and Trade Fair’. The tri­als are part of the Bei­jing Munic­i­pal Bureau of Econ­o­my and Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy’s Draft released in May, enti­tled Action Plan for Pro­mot­ing High-qual­i­ty Devel­op­ment of Low-Alti­tude Econ­o­my Indus­tries in Bei­jing (2024–2027).

Poster Kepler Dig­i­tals wrote, “Excit­ing mile­stone for XPENG Aero­ht with their fly­ing car’s inau­gur­al flight near Bei­jing. Inno­va­tion in aer­i­al mobil­i­ty is advanc­ing swift­ly, paving the way for new pos­si­bil­i­ties in trans­porta­tion tech­nol­o­gy.”

Please Watch Video

XPENG AERO­HT’s fly­ing car made its first flight in the Bei­jing vicin­i­ty.#XPENGAEROHT #Fly­ing­Car #Tech #Bei­jing pic.twitter.com/dzWoRDCJUH

— XPENG AEROHT (@XPENG_AEROHT) June 18, 2024

This Draft aims to estab­lish Bei­jing as a hub for inno­va­tion in the low-alti­tude econ­o­my. It explores new busi­ness mod­els for eVTOLs, includ­ing inter­ci­ty com­mut­ing and inner-city shut­tle ser­vices. Only a few months ago, Xiao Peng, CEO of Xpeng CEO had been in Bei­jing pitch­ing his vision for fly­ing vehi­cles to the Nation­al Con­gress.

The Xpeng X2, known as Voy­ager 2 when orig­i­nal­ly launched, is more of a drone-type vehi­cle than a car. It fea­tures a two-seater design con­struct­ed main­ly from car­bon mate­ri­als. The X2 mea­sures 16.9 ft in length, 16.8 ft in width, and 4.5 ft in height, with a curb weight of 1,500 lbs and a max­i­mum pay­load of 353 lbs. Unlike many con­sumer drones with four rotors, the X2 is an octo­copter, pro­vid­ing extra thrust and redun­dan­cy. In case of motor fail­ure, a built-in para­chute ensures safe­ty.

With a flight endurance of 25 min­utes, the X2 has under­gone near­ly 4,000 test flights and has been test­ed in var­i­ous sce­nar­ios, includ­ing urban areas, sea regions and deserts. Aero­HT plans to offer an extend­ed-range option for the mass-pro­duced ver­sion, pre­sum­ably with a larg­er bat­tery, to hit the mar­ket in the next few years. How­ev­er, Xpeng will first pro­duce the Land Car­ri­er, which con­sists of a drone-type car and trans­port vehi­cle, in 2025.

X2 eVTOL ‘Wow­ing’ a Bei­jing Crowd

Mean­while, accord­ing to Beijing’s Low Alti­tude Action Plan, the city is to open “over three low-alti­tude air routes con­nect­ing the down­town with its sur­round­ing areas. These will sup­port over ten new appli­ca­tions includ­ing emer­gency res­cue, logis­tic dis­tri­b­u­tion, air shut­tling, inter-city com­mut­ing and char­ac­ter­is­tic cul­tur­al tourism.”

It goes on, “This ini­tia­tive will help estab­lish a large­ly-com­plet­ed net­worked infra­struc­ture sys­tem and an appli­ca­tion ecosys­tem for the low-alti­tude econ­o­my.”

These plans also cov­er emer­gency res­cue where present con­struc­tion of the Fang­shan base is to be accel­er­at­ed. This base will pro­mote the use of gen­er­al avi­a­tion for city­wide emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tion, fire­fight­ing, patrol and inspec­tion. 

For logis­tic dis­tri­b­u­tion, Bei­jing will use Badal­ing Air­port in Yan­qing Dis­trict as a hub to open air routes includ­ing the north­west logis­tics branch line. A new dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el com­bin­ing drones and bus­es will also be devel­oped.

Plans to estab­lish a low-alti­tude eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment lead­ing group led by #Bei­jing lead­ers

Recent­ly, the ‘Bei­jing Action Plan for Pro­mot­ing High-Qual­i­ty Devel­op­ment of Low-Eco­nom­ic Indus­tries (2024–2027)’ pub­licly invit­ed opin­ions.#Ehang #uam #aav #evtol pic.twitter.com/jEL1keDMld

— Insight Cre­ator (@runjames2025) May 18, 2024

The Draft con­tin­ues, “For inter-city com­mut­ing, air routes will be estab­lished between Bei­jing Dax­ing Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and Xiong’an New Area, as well as between Bei­jing Cap­i­tal Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and Tian­jin, Lang­fang, and oth­er areas to facil­i­tate com­mut­ing.” Mean­while, low-alti­tude tourism and flight expe­ri­ence pro­grams will be devel­oped in Yan­qing, Ping­gu, Miyun and oth­er dis­tricts.

The Draft con­cludes, “To strength­en the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the entire low-alti­tude man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try chain, Bei­jing will sup­port the research and man­u­fac­tur­ing of advanced air mobil­i­ty. This includes encour­ag­ing dis­tricts to intro­duce and devel­op advanced air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­grams for drones and eVTOL (elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing) vehi­cles, and fos­ter­ing the devel­op­ment of core com­po­nents and mate­ri­als like engines. By 2027, Bei­jing aims to cul­ti­vate 10 lead­ing enter­pris­es, each with a busi­ness size of more than CNY 1 bil­lion, 50 core sup­port­ing enter­pris­es in the indus­try chain, each with a busi­ness size of more than CNY 100 mil­lion, and 100 tech­nol­o­gy ser­vice enter­pris­es of sim­i­lar scales.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.aeroht.com

(News Source: https://english.beijing.gov.cn/ https://carnewschina.com)

(Top image: Xpeng)

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