Will 2025 Be the Year Flying Cars Take Off?

Is this really happening? After decades, or maybe even a century of promises, is this year going to be the one in which flying cars take to the skies?

The fact that I have just climbed out of a prototype suggests that dreams of personal aviation may finally be coming true. Not that I’ve actually flown anywhere in it, mind you.

The “flying car” in question is the XPENG AEROHT X2—a completely autonomous two-seater electrical aerial vehicle designed for low-altitude city flying. It’s like a scaled-up hobby drone mixed with a modern hypercar—sleek angles and quad rotors outside, exposed carbon fiber, and bucket seats with full harnesses inside. There are screens to plot your route and display flight information like airspeed and an artificial horizon, but no yoke, or joystick controls, just those touchscreens and a roof-mounted array of toggle switches.

It’s on static display at XPENG’s high-profile U.K. launch, and while the main event is focused on the Chinese brand’s range of land-based EVs, it’s the firm’s future in the sky that is far more fascinating.

The X2 made its first public flight in Dubai in 2022, and at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, the company revealed a “Land Aircraft Carrier”—a six-wheeled hybrid-powered van that houses a two-seater quad-copter in the rear. At the touch of a button, the aircraft emerges, unfolds, and can be ready to fly in a matter of minutes.

XPENG says it’s building a network of “Strategically developing flying camps around cities and popular self-driving routes equipped with take-off and landing platforms and clear airspace.”

These will be in the company’s homeland where the process of getting certification is already well underway and where, XPENG says, more than 3000 customers have already ordered the $275,000 flying car/MPV combo.

In the pipeline are a long-range tilt-rotor aircraft and a sports car that will also be able to take to the skies. Flights of fancy? Perhaps, but XPENG has gone from a startup to becoming China’s biggest premium EV maker in just ten years, currently exports to 29 countries, and has its sights set on doubling that number this year. Some 40 percent of its employees work in research and development, so to say it is serious about its aerial ambitions is an understatement.

Legacy carmakers are also getting in on the airborne action. In Japan, SkyDrive has been flying its prototype 12-rotor three-seater since 2019 and has also taken its first steps towards certification in Japan and the U.S. At almost 38 feet in length, it can hardly be described as a car, but it is being built in conjunction with a carmaker: Suzuki.

Toyota has sunk over a billion dollars into Joby Aviation and its tilt-rotor eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft that promises speeds over 200 mph. The hydrogen fuel cell-powered craft has proven itself on a 500-plus mile test flight in California and is over halfway through its full certification.

Honda doesn’t intend to be left out and is working on a hybrid eVTOL that uses a combination of the gas turbine engine from the HondaJet and F1-derived regen and battery tech. With ten rotors providing propulsion Honda is aiming for a 250-mile range.

Hyundai showed its idea for “auto meets aero” at the 2024 CES with eight tilting rotors. The Supernal S-A2 will target short journeys of 25-40 miles but can tick them off at speeds of up to 120 mph while flying at 1500 feet. Hyundai says it’ll be certified for flight by 2028.

BMW, meanwhile, has added its design touches to the Skai—a four-seater eVTOL that uses a hydrogen fuel cell and six electric motors. It will have a claimed range of 400 miles and a top speed of 118 mph. Other features include a reassuring three-level safety system: should one motor fail, the Skai will stay in the sky, if a second motor packs up it will land immediately, while if the failure is even more serious it will deploy a ballistic parachute.

Porsche has previously collaborated with Boeing on a Dark Knight-inspired two-passenger aircraft with ducted fans and flexible wings. It looks menacingly cool, but the project appears to have stalled since.

Stellantis is gearing up to manufacture a huge 12-rotor eVTOL designed by Archer Aviation. Despite its size, the so-called Midnight is only said to be good for a 100-mile maximum flight duration. It’s more flying bus than car, to be frank.

That’s just the automakers, of course. There are plenty of other aviation startups around the world promising to lift us high above the traffic and get us to work or play faster and more efficiently than ever. Maybe, just maybe this time, the flying car is finally about to take off.