XPeng AeroHT's Newest Motion Picture Reveals a CGI Future: CEOs Will Use Flying Cars

If you've been keeping up with the news happening worldwide, you'd know that our dreams of flying cars are literally no longer a fantasy; these things exist, and frankly, with the right amount of cash, you'll soon be able to own one, if you haven't already found someone selling them. However, XPeng AeroHT (XA) is slightly different from other crews tackling this endeavor and has successfully managed their first prototype flight, among others. And when I say prototype, I'm talking about an actual car with massive drone-like propellors, lifting off, moving around 10 meters (33 feet) off the ground, and finally safely landing. I've added that video below.

Speaking of videos, the purpose of this article is XA's freshest motion picture that reveals how this manufacturer sees our future. It's exactly as I've envisioned it ever since I was a kid, even though, ultimately, it's going to take a very long time until our societies develop the infrastructure to make this dream a functioning reality. Hell, look at how hard it is to set up an efficient EV charging network in some countries. If we talk about flying cars, there's bound to be a myriad of other issues. But, issues or not, it still helps to envision the proverbial final destination, the ultimate goal, and that's what XA has done with their newest YouTube video, and all of it starts with nothing more than a traffic jam.

In that traffic, sitting upon a rather futuristic bridge - remember, just about all of what you'll witness is CGI – XA's newest "flying car," the X3, is carrying its owner. From here, we can see said owner flying around, avoiding this traffic jam, and on his way to the XA exhibition museum the video includes. But there's a very real problem that was not revealed in the video, the takeoff.

Think about that very scenario for a minute: how in the world are you going to take off from a traffic jam, on a bridge, with vehicles of varying dimensions all around? How!? Let's see what the heck it would take to do so. First of all, you must be able to deploy your propellors, much like I do on my DJI Mini 2, nearly tripling the size of this vehicle on a horizontal axis. With this movement, assuming the cars around you are all Lambos, Ferraris, and BMW i8s, you'll be able to take off. If the cars around are anything but, and include taxis, delivery trucks, 18-wheelers, and all that, much like it is in the real world, you'll have to literally stop traffic and clear a space around you to take off. That's not going to happen in the real world.

But the landing sequence portrayed in both videos below is more in line with how things are really going to develop. The use of a takeoff and landing pad is the only real applicable approach to these machines, so say goodbye to taking off in 5 PM traffic and avoiding the rush. If you're the CEO of the company that owns the building, you can have such a vehicle hanging out on the roof, and at home, your dog will be waiting for you on a helipad, not a driveway.

Coming back to the video, the story continues with an actor that is apparently absorbed into XA's manufacturing and testing team, and frankly, it's kind of nice because, for a few seconds, created by flashes of imagery like that experienced in video games (First Person), we see some of the real XA world, the current one, in all its glory. We even catch glimpses of real XA machines and components being tended to.

Now, all of this seems rather poetic and all that, but in truth, this video feels like one of those videos designed to attract, who, precisely, we may never know. Maybe it's intended to attract future investors with a dream that most of us have had since we could fathom the idea of a flying car. Maybe it's designed to attract a workforce; the end of the video shows off those cheerful faces that have completed their successful tests.

In the end, it may be a video destined for people like you and me with the allure of this sort of mobility, when in truth, it's going to be some good decades until our society is in line with the images XA shows us today. Heck, I'm 35 years old, and by the time we have flying cars moving around like bees pollinating skyscrapers, I might be dead. And we haven't even touched up on the subject of the size of the bank account you'll probably need to own something like this.

For now, the future we dream of is still a dream for the majority of us anyway; something about 1% rule all the wealth in the world? Heck, the recent "Public Flight" performed with the X2 in Dubai was, well, showcased in Dubai. Have you ever asked yourself how much the cost of living is out there? Let me point out that XPeng is projecting prices for an X2 at around $160,000 (€152,000 at current exchange rates) in 2024. Then we need to consider the operating costs of something like this, never mind the landing pads and charging infrastructure. Come to think of it, if you own a yacht with a helipad, you're primed and ready to experience the future the video reveals, and from the CEO's perspective, not the manufacturing team's.