The dream of the flying car might always remain precisely that—a dream. An unrealized fantasy that sounds fun and futuristic but would, in reality, be a logistical nightmare where the average fender bender would turn into an airplane crash.
As evidence of the dangers associated with the concept of the flying car, I submit a story about two electric flying cars that collided mid-air during a rehearsal for the Changchun Air Show in northeast China. The crash involved vehicles from Xpeng AeroHT, a subsidiary of Chinese electric vehicle giant Xpeng Motors. One of the cars burst into flames after landing.
While the company was quick to say that “all personnel at the scene are safe,” CNN cited an anonymous employee who claimed one person was injured.
Flying Cars Crashed Into Each Other Mid-Air Ahead of Airshow
The vehicles, which take off and land vertically like drones, are priced at around $300,000 a pop and come equipped with four sets of propellers. They’re not quite personal spaceships like you’d see on The Jetsons, but they’re the closest to wacky science fiction car tech that we’ve got in the real world.
Footage on the Chinese social media platform Weibo showed fire trucks swarming a scorched vehicle as spectators looked on. It should be interesting to see how this mishap affects sales, since Xpeng claims it’s already racked up about 3,000 pre-orders before the crash.
While I believe flying cars will always be unfeasible, to be fair, the tech is still in its awkward gangly teenage years. They’re more helicopter than car right now.
According to the BBC, analysts agree that while the infrastructure, regulations, and public trust aren’t quite there yet, China wants to do for flying cars what it did for electric ones—make them cheap, ubiquitous, and just dangerous enough to be exciting.
What good is a new technology if there isn’t the slim but very real chance that you could die in it? Burning alive, screaming for your loved ones, is a real selling point for some early adopters.
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