Xpeng Aeroht, an Urban Air Mobility (UAM) company affiliated with car manufacturer XPeng Inc., celebrated a significant milestone last week by launching a ground testing centre for its autonomous eVTOLs in Foshan, China, reports a press release.
The centre, approximately 58,000 square metres in size, is pivotal to Xpeng Aeroht’s research and development, as well as for validation of new eVTOL technologies and technical standard development, conducting comprehensive ground-level tests for both the entire vehicle and system-level attributes.
The testing centre will be constructed in two phases, with the recently inaugurated Phase One covering 30,000 square metres. This primarily focuses on constructing 12 categories of critical large-scale test benches, including pioneering elements such as gantry cranes, rotor towers, and flight vibration platforms.
The Phase Two, with an area of 28,000 square meters, plans to establish laboratories for key systems like flight control and autonomous driving. These labs will include facilities for high and low-temperature environment testing, material mechanics performance, as well as scenarios for integrating aircraft and automotive use.
Shuo Chen, Deputy Director of the test facility, commented, “This centre will conduct comprehensive ground tests, including strength, load, vibration, durability, environmental factors, and materials. It will support product validation from virtual simulation to real-world testing.”
XPeng Aeroht was established in 2020 and has its R&D headquarters in Guangzhou. It operates four major testing bases at:-
: Seagull Island Flight — focused on validation flights, durability tests and certification flights.
: R&D Flight Test Centre — dedicated to prototype flight testing.
: Powertrain Experiment Centre — specialising in testing electric motors, batteries, and high-voltage electrical components.
: Ground Comprehensive Testing Centre — the latest addition, designed to cover all aspects of R&D for eVTOL flight process.
Zhao Deli, Founder and President of Xpeng Aeroht, remarked, “The completion of the testing centre in just four months will assist us in creating the next-generation flying car, which is currently at a crucial R&D development phase. Our pioneering testing and flight system centre will continue to play a core role, helping us to achieve mass production within the next 2–3 years.”
Background
The Xpeng autonomous eVTOL has accumulated over 15,000 safe manned flights and won various industrial design accolades including the Red Dot, IF and IDEA Design Awards.
Xpeng Aeroht raised over USD500 million for its Series A capital funding in October, 2021. The funding round was led by IDG Capital, 5Y Capital and XPeng Inc. with participation by a consortium of renowned investors including Sequoia China, Eastern Bell Capital, GGV Capital, GL Ventures and Yunfeng Capital.
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