Check out video footage of XPeng AeroHT’s flying car completing its maiden flight
Following XPeng’s recent 1024 Tech Day event in China earlier this week, we have finally been able to share video footage of its latest generation of eVTOL built by AeroHT. As promised during the presentation, XPeng’s flying car prototype completed its maiden flight and has the receipts to prove it. You’ve gotta see this.
Earlier this week, we delivered a recap of XPeng’s annual 1024 Tech Day, where the company introduces new and upcoming products and services, whiles teasing some of the advanced technologies it’s developing for the future. For a second year in a row, XPeng’s urban air mobility (UAM) division AeroHT stole the show with its flying car prototype.
The unique eVTOL that can drive on roads and navigate through air was first unveiled at XPeng’s 1024 Tech Day in 2021, which included some sleek renderings and an animated video. This year’s presentation included news that the XPeng AeroHT team had upgraded the design of the sixth-generation eVTOL from a horizontal dual-rotor structure, to a new distributed multi-rotor configuration.
The company also shared that the overall system design complexity of the eVTOL had been reduced to ensure better safety and reliability during flights. Better yet, a prototype had been built and had completed its maiden flight. Naturally, we were eager to see this footage, but it was shared during the end of the Tech Day Presentation in China, and we had to wait for the entire video to be translated to English and posted.
In the meantime, we shared a cool video of XPeng’s latest flying car in action, but it was once again animated renderings and not the real thing. Today however, we have gotten our hands on footage of the maiden flight, and it’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, although it’s not without its journalistic skepticism and future safety concerns. Check it out below.
Watch XPeng’s flying car take off, fly, and land
As promised, we were able to track down and share footage of the flying car flight, straight from the end of XPeng’s translated Tech Day presentation. There’s lots of other cool technology on the way from this Chinese automaker, so we recommend checking out the full presentation if you have time.
Anyways, back to the flight. As you’ll soon see, the flying car prototype drives out onto a tarmac, engages its propellers, and takes off vertically as the XPeng AeroHT team looks on with bated breath. The flying car doesn’t move around too much, but it does reach a decent height before descending back to Earth and sticking its landing, thanks to the vehicle’s suspension and tires.
Check out the video below and let’s talk about it. Does this look legitimate? Is this the future of mobility a la The Jetsons? Or are we on the fast track to getting decapitated?
Electrek’s Take
This footage is as scary and concerning as it is exciting and awe-inspiring. There are plenty of ways that XPeng and AeroHT could have pulled this flying car video off, perhaps using a lighter-weight vehicle or cardboard parts. But in my interactions with the team and its engineers, that doesn’t seem like their style. He Xiaopeng is not Trevor Milton, and AeroHT is something he has personally invested in, in addition to funding from XPeng Inc.
Regardless of how viable this flying car is, there is no denying the fact that we have not seen anything like this before. UAM continues to grow and move closer to reality each day with eVTOLs designed more similarly to planes than anything, but XPeng has combined a car. A flying car.
At its very nucleus, the mere fact that XPeng and AeroHT were able to imagine a flying car like this, assemble a prototype, and get it airborne should be commended. Even if it does not become a scaled production vehicle, its challenge to the status quo and proving what is possible is perhaps worth more. We need more of this sort of thinking and tinkering out there.
Obviously, there are major safety concerns regarding the propellers, and there would need to be serious regulations and safe practices before this becomes a viable mobility segment, but that’s the boring stuff that’s a lot easier than building a vehicle that can drive, retract propellers, and take off into the air. Read that sentence again. What a time to be alive.
XPeng and AeroHT are a long ways away from the beautiful rendering you see in the image above, but by developing and testing this flying car with video proof, they are arguably closer to delivering one than anybody else out there. You simply cannot knock people for trying. They should be celebrated.
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Tesla (TSLA) is no longer confidently stating growth in its automotive business for 2025, and it has delayed updating its guidance until the next quarter after a disappointing performance in the first three months of the year.
2024 was Tesla’s first year in a decade where its vehicle deliveries went down year-over-year.
Just a few months ago, in January, Tesla was confident in predicting that it would return to growth in 2025:
“With the advancements in vehicle autonomy and the introduction of new products, we expect the vehicle business to return to growth in 2025.”
Today, Tesla released its Q1 2025 financial results, confirming that it had its worst quarter in years to start 2025.
The automaker is now clearly not as confident about returning to growth in its automotive business this year.
Tesla updated its “outlook” section this quarter to highlight the potential impact of trade policies and now no longer discusses automotive growth in isolation. Instead, it bundled automotive and energy businesses together and said that it will “revisit its 2025 guidance” next quarter:
It is difficult to measure the impacts of shifting global trade policy on the automotive and energy supply chains, our cost structure and demand for durable goods and related services. While we are making prudent investments that will set up both our vehicle and energy businesses for growth, the rate of growth this year will depend on a variety of factors, including the rate of acceleration of our autonomy efforts, production ramp at our factories and the broader macroeconomic environment. We will revisit our 2025 guidance in our Q2 update.
Tesla’s vehicle deliveries are already down about 50,000 units so far this year compared to last year.
It will be challenging to catch up in the current macroeconomic situation.
Tesla again guided the start of production of “new affordable models” in the first half of 2025, which could help the automaker to deliver more cars.
However, as we have previously reported, these new vehicles are expected to be stripped-down Model Y and Model 3, which will cannibalize Tesla’s current sales and limit its growth to those products.
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US DC fast charging is becoming more reliable, and charging stations are getting bigger and busier, according to a new Q1 2025 report from the EV data analysts at Paren.
DC fast charging station reliability is on the rise
Paren’s latest US Reliability Index – “Can I successfully charge at this charger?” – increased from 81.2 points in Q4 2024 to 82.6 points in Q1 2025, a notable jump of 1.7%. According to Bill Ferro, CTO at Paren, “This continues a quarterly trend across the US non-Tesla fast charging infrastructure, which suggests that the ongoing efforts to replace or sunset older hardware are having a positive impact on station uptime. In addition, newer entrants into the field are bringing time-tested hardware along with enhanced driver experiences.”
Utah, Alaska, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Nevada were the top-ranked states for DC fast charging reliability in Q1 2025.
Growth slows, but charging stations are getting larger
New DC fast charging ports grew to 55,580 at the end of Q1 2025, up 3,667 from last quarter, with total stations reaching 10,839, an increase of 794. This is fewer new additions compared to the surge seen at the end of 2024, reflecting typical seasonal slowdowns due to winter weather. However, there’s a bright spot: the average number of ports per station among non-Tesla networks rose to 3.9, compared to 2.7 year-over-year. The Tesla Supercharger network now averages 13 ports per station.
Utilization rates reflect the urban-rural divide
Average utilization – that’s the minutes of a charging session as a percentage of time a station is open each day – dropped slightly from 16.6% in Q4 2024 to 16.2% in Q1 2025, following typical holiday travel patterns. But overall, charging use is climbing, especially in dense urban areas with significant rideshare and apartment communities that rely heavily on public chargers.
Early days for NACS transition
The Combined Charging System (CCS) remains dominant, with 59% of new ports, and the shift toward Tesla’s NACS (J3400) standard is still in its very early stages. Only 104 non-Tesla NACS ports were added this quarter at non-Tesla networks, so drivers of new non-Tesla vehicles need to use their adapters if they want to use Superchargers.
Fixed pricing prevails
Charging operators primarily use fixed pricing (80%), with Time of Use (TOU) pricing making up 16%. Pay-by-time options are rare, used only 4.2% of the time.
California is the only major state where TOU pricing surpasses fixed pricing, while many states, such as Oklahoma, Vermont, and Arkansas, almost exclusively utilize fixed pricing models.
As for the most expensive places to fast charge your EV? The top four metropolitan statistical areas are all in California, with average rates at $0.60 or $0.61 per kWh.
Rural and low-income areas at risk
The Trump administration’s cancellation of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program poses a significant threat to rural and low-income communities. Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, cautioned, “Our data is a harbinger of less expansion in rural and lower-income markets as CPOs will increasingly focus on urban markets, seeing high utilization, often north of 30%, versus markets with less than 5% utilization.”
‘Charging 2.0’ – a new industry phase
McDonald summed up the report by marking 2024 as a pivotal year, stating, “2024 was a year of mixed news in the US DC fast charging industry, but it will be remembered as a pivotal turn to a new era we are calling ‘Charging 2.0’. Charge-point operators and new players in the industry are increasingly focused on creating a great customer experience, improving reliability of chargers, and reaching profitability – a shift from chasing the availability of incentives, racing to get chargers in the ground, and then crossing your fingers that utilization will grow over time.”
Read more: Trump just canceled the federal NEVI EV charger program
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Tesla (TSLA) released its financial results and shareholders’ letter for the first quarter (Q1) and full-year 2025 after market close today.
We are updating this post with all the details from the financial results, shareholders’ letter, and the conference call later tonight. Refresh for the latest information.
Tesla Q1 2025 earnings expectations
As we reported in our Tesla Q1 2025 earnings preview yesterday, the Wall Street consensus for this quarter was $21.345 billion in revenue and earnings of $0.41 per share.
The expectations had been significantly downgraded over the last month, as analysts were surprised by Tesla’s announcement of much lower deliveries than expected in the first quarter.
Did Tesla meet them?`
Tesla Q1 2025 financial results
After the market closed today, Tesla released its financial results for the first quarter and confirmed that it missed expectations with earnings of $0.27 per share (non-GAAP), and it also missed revenue expectations with $19.335 billion during the last quarter.
This is a big miss for Tesla despite the company admitting to selling a lot more regulatory credits this quarter.
At $595 million in credit sales, Tesla would have lost money without it in Q1 2025:
In short, Tesla is on the verge of being a money-losing company.
We will be posting our follow-up posts here about the earnings and conference call to expand on the most important points (refresh the page to see the most recent posts):
Here’s Tesla’s Q1 2025 shareholder presentation in full:
Here’s Tesla’s conference call for the Q1 2025 results:
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