China: Xpeng Aeroht Launches eVTOL Ground Testing Centre

Xpeng Aero­ht, an Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) com­pa­ny affil­i­at­ed with car man­u­fac­tur­er XPeng Inc., cel­e­brat­ed a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone last week by launch­ing a ground test­ing cen­tre for its autonomous eVTOLs in Fos­han, Chi­na, reports a press release.

The cen­tre, approx­i­mate­ly 58,000 square metres in size, is piv­otal to Xpeng Aeroht’s research and devel­op­ment, as well as for val­i­da­tion of new eVTOL tech­nolo­gies and tech­ni­cal stan­dard devel­op­ment, con­duct­ing com­pre­hen­sive ground-lev­el tests for both the entire vehi­cle and sys­tem-lev­el attrib­ut­es.

The test­ing cen­tre will be con­struct­ed in two phas­es, with the recent­ly inau­gu­rat­ed Phase One cov­er­ing 30,000 square metres. This pri­mar­i­ly focus­es on con­struct­ing 12 cat­e­gories of crit­i­cal large-scale test bench­es, includ­ing pio­neer­ing ele­ments such as gantry cranes, rotor tow­ers, and flight vibra­tion plat­forms. 

The Phase Two, with an area of 28,000 square meters, plans to estab­lish lab­o­ra­to­ries for key sys­tems like flight con­trol and autonomous dri­ving. These labs will include facil­i­ties for high and low-tem­per­a­ture envi­ron­ment test­ing, mate­r­i­al mechan­ics per­for­mance, as well as sce­nar­ios for inte­grat­ing air­craft and auto­mo­tive use.

Shuo Chen, Deputy Direc­tor of the test facil­i­ty, com­ment­ed, “This cen­tre will con­duct com­pre­hen­sive ground tests, includ­ing strength, load, vibra­tion, dura­bil­i­ty, envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, and mate­ri­als. It will sup­port prod­uct val­i­da­tion from vir­tu­al sim­u­la­tion to real-world test­ing.”

Watch Videos: Xpeng X2 eVTOL Com­pletes Cross-Riv­er Flight in Chi­na

Xpeng Huit­ian Trav­el­er X2 eVTOL Award­ed Spe­cial Flight Cer­tifi­cate by CAAC

XPeng Aero­ht was estab­lished in 2020 and has its R&D head­quar­ters in Guangzhou. It oper­ates four major test­ing bases at:-

: Seag­ull Island Flight — focused on val­i­da­tion flights, dura­bil­i­ty tests and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion flights.

: R&D Flight Test Cen­tre — ded­i­cat­ed to pro­to­type flight test­ing.

: Pow­er­train Exper­i­ment Cen­tre — spe­cial­is­ing in test­ing elec­tric motors, bat­ter­ies, and high-volt­age elec­tri­cal com­po­nents.

: Ground Com­pre­hen­sive Test­ing Cen­tre — the lat­est addi­tion, designed to cov­er all aspects of R&D for eVTOL flight process.

Zhao Deli, Founder and Pres­i­dent of Xpeng Aero­ht, remarked, “The com­ple­tion of the test­ing cen­tre in just four months will assist us in cre­at­ing the next-gen­er­a­tion fly­ing car, which is cur­rent­ly at a cru­cial R&D devel­op­ment phase. Our pio­neer­ing test­ing and flight sys­tem cen­tre will con­tin­ue to play a core role, help­ing us to achieve mass pro­duc­tion with­in the next 2–3 years.”

Back­ground

The Xpeng autonomous eVTOL has accu­mu­lat­ed over 15,000 safe manned flights and won var­i­ous indus­tri­al design acco­lades includ­ing the Red Dot, IF and IDEA Design Awards.

Xpeng Aero­ht raised over USD500 mil­lion for its Series A cap­i­tal fund­ing in Octo­ber, 2021. The fund­ing round was led by IDG Cap­i­tal, 5Y Cap­i­tal and XPeng Inc. with par­tic­i­pa­tion by a con­sor­tium of renowned investors includ­ing Sequoia Chi­na, East­ern Bell Cap­i­tal, GGV Cap­i­tal, GL Ven­tures and Yun­feng Cap­i­tal.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.heyxpeng.com/

(Launch Cer­e­mo­ny — Cred­it: Xpeng)