Flying car: easy to go to the sky, a bit difficult to "land"
Our reporter Ma Aiping
To fly freely like a bird is the dream of mankind since ancient times.
As early as more than 300 years ago, the Qing Dynasty novelist Li Ruzhen wrote the earliest description of speeding cars in "Mirror Flower Margin".
More than 200 years ago, the shadow of a speeding car appeared in the science fiction novel "World Domination" written by French novelist Jules Verne.
In addition to words, people's exploration of making cars fly has never stopped.
At the Beijing Auto Show on October 5, Xiaopeng Huitian released the first ultra-low-altitude flying car "Xiaopeng Huitianluhanger T1".
From personal small-scale practice to capital focus
"The practical exploration of flying cars in the past 100 years has mainly taken place in the United States. Through the combination of cars and airplanes, people have designed flying cars that have both ground driving and air flight functions." my country's first Wright Brothers Medal winner, Tsinghua University Vehicle and Zhang Yangjun, professor of the School of Transportation and the executive deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of Automobile Safety and Energy, told the reporter of Science and Technology Daily.
As a new type of transportation for urban air transportation and future travel, flying cars are increasingly being valued in the aviation and automotive fields.
Today, it has evolved from the small-scale practice of the original personal dreamer to the focus of the capital market.
Traditional aviation giants such as Boeing, Airbus, Bell, Embraer, and AVIC have all deployed electric flying cars.
"Geely, Toyota, Hyundai, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, GM and other traditional auto companies have also joined the ranks of flying car research and development." Zhang Yangjun said.
Roland Berger predicted in the "Urban Air Traffic-The Rise of a New Mode of Transportation" research report released in November 2018 that by 2025, 3000 flying cars will be put into use. It will grow exponentially; it is predicted that by 2050, nearly 100,000 flying cars will be used for air taxis, airport shuttles and intercity flights worldwide.
Morgan Stanley (Morgan Stanley) also released a blue book stating that the global urban air transportation industry will reach 1.5 trillion US dollars by 2040.
What does a flying car look like now
In recent years, with the rise of the concept of urban air traffic, the concept of modern flying cars has been expanded from the traditional concept of land and air amphibious vehicles to electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft.
Take "Xiaopenghui Tianluhanger T1" as an example. The appearance of the flying car is mainly silver, resembling a spider, and it has a taste of "Iron Man".
The entire aircraft is composed of a seat at the bottom and an 8-axis propeller at the top. The battery is mainly located on the top, supporting 5-25 meters ultra-low altitude flight, single parking space, and vertical take-off and landing.
According to reports, its price may be similar to a luxury car.
In addition to "Xiaopenghui Tianluhanger T1", "Ehang216, a flying car developed by China Yihang Company, and Joby S4, a flying car developed by Joby Aircraft Corporation of the United States, also adopt multi-rotor electric vertical take-off and landing. They are emerging technology companies. A representative flying car developed by Ehang216. Ehang216 has 8 sets of rotors, the maximum take-off weight can reach 600 kg, the rated load is 220 kg, it can carry 2 people, the cruising speed can reach 100 km/h or more, and it can fly continuously for 20 minutes. Above. Joby S4 has a maximum take-off weight of 1815 kg, a maximum payload of about 450 kg, and a cruising speed of 320 km/h with a range of 240 km." Zhang Yangjun said.
Really fly into life and face multiple bottlenecks and obstacles
As the flying car was unveiled at the auto show, many people couldn't help shouting: "Farewell to the congestion, I want to fly higher!" But in fact, the moving moment of saying goodbye to the nightmare stuck on the highway may not come soon.
Zhang Yangjun pointed out that the development of flying cars is still in the early stage of moving from research and exploration to commercial application.
The implication is that the urban air transportation with flying cars as the carrier will subvert people's traditional way of travel.
But to realize this beautiful vision, there are still many bottlenecks and obstacles.
Zhang Yangjun said, the first is the issue of rules.
It involves urban airspace management, including the formulation of "routes", driving rules, division of accident responsibilities, and air law enforcement methods.
So far, there is no clear and unified standard and regulatory system for flying car certification and air traffic management in the world.
The second is the market issue.
For example, flying cars use electric distributed propulsion, and the actual operating noise is much smaller than that of helicopters. However, the frequency of urban air traffic operations is much intensive than the existing helicopter urban operations. How much impact will it have on urban human life? Is it acceptable to the public? None is yet known.
In addition, the infrastructure, operating model, economic cost, and user experience of urban air transportation have not yet seen embryos.
The third is technical issues.
“Flying car performance mainly involves three major technical fields: car body structure, flight control driving and power propulsion. Because power propulsion technology has its own unique professional technical threshold and difficulty, technical research on the performance of flying cars, whether it is to make cars fly The early exploration, or the current research and development practice for urban air traffic, are mainly concentrated in the two technical fields of car body structure and flight control driving. For power propulsion, more are the selection of existing technologies and products. There are relatively few researches on the power propulsion of flying vehicles. The bottleneck of power propulsion will lead to low payload and short range of flying vehicles, which is the most important problem and challenge facing the performance research and development of flying vehicles." Zhang Yangjun said.
Not only vehicles can be used for fire rescue
Although it is a long way for flying cars to truly enter people's lives as a means of transportation, we may see them show their talents in the fields of firefighting and emergency rescue earlier.
Zhang Yangjun said that the current fire rescue and forest fire protection of high-rise buildings are the main pain points of the fire protection system.
The key to the inability to fundamentally solve these two problems lies in the lack of effective equipment, and the emergence of flying cars provides new ideas for solving the above problems.
A flying car can fly to a height of 100 meters very quickly (about 1 minute), and its load capacity is strong, and it can achieve a large flow of water spray, which is very suitable for high-rise building fire rescue and forest fire protection applications.
"There are currently more than 100,000 ambulances in China, but they are mainly deployed in urban areas. Over 40% of China's population lives in rural areas. Considering that most of the rural population lives in mountainous areas, islands, plateaus and other places, it is not easy to obtain emergency services. Flying cars have become a very effective rescue method for these people." Zhang Yangjun said, and in the case of urban ground traffic congestion, the fast-moving characteristics of flying cars have also made it a rapid rescue method for urban populations. Useful supplement.
In addition, the development of flying cars will bring a series of chain reactions.
"For example, the electric traction of flying cars will enhance the independent innovation and product upgrades of electric vehicles and electric aviation; and the breakthrough of key technological bottlenecks in flying cars will not only lay the foundation for the development of urban air traffic, but also effectively promote power. Technological breakthroughs and innovations in the industrial chain of batteries, fuel cells, new lightweight materials, and intelligent driving will enhance the ability to lead a new round of scientific and technological revolutions and industrial changes, which are important for China to achieve the goal of a strong transportation country, especially the development of emerging industries of electric aviation strategy Strategic significance." Zhang Yangjun said.