It was tested two months after Aerofugia obtained the country’s first license for a manned flying car. It currently has space for one pilot and four passengers.
If the vehicle looks familiar, it’s because it looks a lot like the Terrafugia Transition flying car that came out of Massachusetts a few years ago. Terrafugia’s flying car cost $279,000 and could travel a distance of 800 kilometers.
Terrafugia was acquired by Geely in 2017, after which it more or less shut down and moved to China in 2021.
Geely invested about $55 million in German eVTOL company Volocopter, opened a subsidiary called Aerofugia in Chengdu, and supported Terrafugia’s merger with Chinese drone maker AOSSCI to enter the eVTOL air taxi business.
The company also made some other investments by acquiring Volvo Cars in 2010, a controlling stake in Lotus Cars in 2017 and a minority stake in Mercedes-Benz Group in 2018.
The AE200.
“Geely’s successful test flight proves that it has enough scientific and technical capability to realize [the commercial viability of] his flying car project,” he said South China Morning Post (SCMP) Wang Ke, a senior consultant focused on the automotive industry at Beijing-based consultancy Analysys.
