GAC’s Gove drive/fly eVTOL concept combines an autonomous flight cabin and ground vehicle.
Chinese carmaker Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC) has unveiled a concept for a future drive/fly electric-vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) vehicle.
Resembling the Pop.Up concept premiered in 2017 by Airbus and Audi, the design comprises a flight cabin that attaches to a vehicle chassis.
The company unveiled the concept, called Gove for GAC, On the go, Vertical and Electric vehicle, at its Tech Day on June 26. It also released a video showing the first flight of the multicopter eVTOL vehicle outside its headquarters in Guangzhou.
The Gove has a two-seat, self-flying flight vehicle with six pairs of coaxial rotors on arms that fold out. The flight cabin attaches to a self-driving electric vehicle chassis for road use. In both flight and road modes, the vehicle uses GAC’s ADiGO-Pilot autonomous driving system.
The Pop.Up and refined Pop.Up Next concept was unveiled in 2018 by Airbus, Audi and Italdesign. It was a modular three-part vehicle with a two-seat passenger capsule that could attach to an autonomous multicopter eVTOL air module or self-driving ground module.
A quarter-scale model of the Pop.Up Next was flown in November 2018, but the design did not progress. In December 2022, the Chinese Academy of Engineering revealed a prototype “flying car” with the same configuration: a passenger cabin that could connect to a multicopter flight module or electric vehicle chassis.
The prototype was jointly developed by the Chongqing Innovation Center of the Beijing Institute of Technology, Cool Black Technology (Beijing) and the Chiongqing municipality. Flight testing of a prototype of the flight vehicle, with a two-seat cabin and eight coaxial rotor pairs, began in 2022.
GAC is the latest Chinese automaker to venture into the eVTOL market. Electric vehicle manufacturer XPeng’s AeroHT subsidiary has flown a series of eVTOL designs, including the two-seat multicopter X2 now in flight test and the planned X3 electric-tiltrotor flying car.
In January the Aerofugia subsidiary of Geely, the Chinese parent company of Volvo and Lotus, flew a full-scale technology demonstrator for its planned AE200 piloted four-passenger eVTOL. Volkswagen Group China has also flown a full-scale demonstrate for the V.MO autonomous passenger eVTOL.
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