It only takes 5 minutes to get started. The first "flying car" that can be driven on the road is here.
On September 3, Xiaopeng Huitian, the largest flying car company in Asia, released a "new species" - a six-wheel vehicle with a shape somewhat similar to the Cybertruck, with a two-person single-stick operated aircraft carried in the trunk. The combination of the two is named "Land Aircraft Carrier".
The car can be driven with a C driver's license, and the aircraft "can be mastered in 5 minutes and proficient in 3 hours", with a price of less than 2 million yuan.
Of course, this does not conform to the truly meaningful flying car that the public imagines, which can take off on the spot in a traffic jam. Instead, it is a startup that, under the constraints of current policies, regulations, and road infrastructure, has made the "optimal solution" to fulfill the commercial expectations of capital and sustain itself.
The flying car is not a new trend. As early as 1917, the first flying car in human history appeared, but in the past hundred years, the accumulated results in this field are all failures, and there are no winners. Apart from technical barriers, the main hurdle is commercialization.
Even Moore Taylor, the pioneer of modern flying cars and a former professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of California, Davis, could only build an experimental prototype after spending 25 years.
The founder of Xiaopeng Huitian, Zhao Deli, is a pure grassroots who did not even finish high school. He independently developed for 7 years in the cold winter and even lost all his family savings before finally gaining the favor of capital at the last moment. It is not yet determined whether he can truly fulfill the grand vision of "changing the way humans travel", but at least, he has taken a step further in commercialization than his predecessors.
24 days after the release of the "Land Aircraft Carrier", Xiaopeng Huitian announced a strategic cooperation with Gaozhi Aviation and Aocheng Aviation and signed a reservation contract for 150 "Land Aircraft Carriers", with a total order amount of nearly 300 million yuan.
This is the "Scale" column, recording the truth and adventure of the new generation of innovators. Innovation is the scale of the commercial future.
Xiaopeng Is Here
The arrival of He Xiaopeng is recognized as a turning point in the fate of Huitian or Zhao Deli.
This is also a widely circulated story - In 2020, Xiaopeng was about to be listed in the US, and He Xiaopeng, who had completed this stage of his business dream, was looking for a new business story. At this time, Wang Xin, the founder of KuaiBo, presented the story of Zhao Deli's many years of research and development of a flying motorcycle to He Xiaopeng.
At that time, Zhao Deli was 42 years old and had been engaged in manned flight for 7 years. He made a single-person flying motorcycle and often rode it on variety shows to earn money; later, in order to attract investment, he wanted to fly with investors and built a two-person version; after persuading a professional designer to join, he made a low-altitude aircraft with a cockpit.
In fact, Zhao Deli initially just wanted to develop an aircraft that was not so difficult to operate, because he felt that it was too difficult to learn to fly a helicopter, and the buttons and joysticks on those panels always made his two hands too busy.
But flying is too charming for him. He has described that charming feeling to the media countless times - the wind blowing loudly past his ears, and he feels extremely free.
So the man who is "a teenager until death" abandoned the fuel-powered flying model airplane business that had earned him a profit of 20 million yuan, and instead invested all his savings in the dream of independently developing a manned aircraft.
He tested the manned function of the aircraft with his own body and broke three toes; he also sold his house and car and overdrew his credit card for research and development, but still failed to retain the team. At the worst time, only his nephew followed him. No one understands his persistence and only thinks he is crazy. Even the friends around him would be told by their wives, "You can do anything, but don't learn from Zhao Deli to fly." He is the most typical negative example in the circle.
Zhao Deli riding a flying motorcycle
Zhao Deli has never been able to obtain a large investment from institutions. Among those who watched him slowly rise into the air on a flying motorcycle under the variety show stage, there are no shortage of star investors and entrepreneurs such as Zhu Xiaohu and Fu Sheng. They all appreciate his dream and courage, but none of them accepted his investment invitation, "The risk is too high, and the benefits cannot be seen in a short period of time. It is definitely not realistic for you to ask me to invest at this stage." Moreover, he is a grassroots with no high school diploma. How can he compete with those returnee entrepreneurs with the aura of studying abroad?
Zhao Deli can see that some investors reluctantly added his WeChat, but they actually don't even want to ask him questions. After he diligently updated his research and development progress to these target investors through WeChat, finally, he was blocked.
"Another investor lead has been broken by me," Zhao Deli reflected later, "Was I too aggressive?" In fact, he not only sent the same message to investors, but also to media reporters. While attracting investment, he is also trying to expand his popularity. At least, those flying videos posted on his own account did attract some private funding for him - mostly local small business owners, who each took out hundreds of thousands to support his dream as angel investment. This money helped Zhao Deli survive many crises until He Xiaopeng came.
After listening to Wang Xin's introduction of Zhao Deli's situation, He Xiaopeng immediately added Zhao Deli's WeChat, and the two talked for more than an hour on voice. During this period, He Xiaopeng put forward many unrestrained ideas. He even asked Zhao Deli if he could make a UFO or something like that. Later, the two agreed to meet on August 1, 2020.
The meeting was earlier than the originally scheduled time. On July 25, He Xiaopeng and his team drove the newly listed Xiaopeng P7 to the location of Zhao Deli's team in Dongguan.
The following conversation has been repeated by Zhao Deli countless times -
"Fly first or talk first?" he asked.
"Fly first," He Xiaopeng replied.
So, He Xiaopeng and Zhao Deli got on an eight-rotor aircraft with two seats, one in front and one behind, and flew out from a place similar to a warehouse. The lawn they passed was blown down, and they made a big circle in the low altitude.
After that, more than ten people crowded into a conference room. He Xiaopeng asked many technical points that he was interested in. In the last 15 minutes, he asked Zhao Deli to leave the most important people and said that he wanted to "talk about something else".
Wang Tan was immediately excited. He is the designer who was "persuaded" by Zhao Deli and is now the chief designer and co-founder of Xiaopeng Huitian.
He knows that from Xiaopeng's perspective at that time, Huitian is the most grassroots and primitive entrepreneurial team, "There is no refined technology, no professionals with a formal education background, no money, no process system. It is just that a few people have an idea. At a time when these large companies that have the ability to do this have not yet taken a fancy to it, they quickly used limited resources to build a prototype. Such a small company."
He Xiaopeng did not sit down again and kept pacing back and forth in the room, "You need financing, right?"
After a brief exchange, a group of people came out of the conference room. Several early investors asked Wang Tan, "How is it, is there a chance?"
Wang Tan was quite happy, "There should be a chance."
A Madman and a Fool
Wang Tan saw Zhao Deli in a public account article in 2018. In the picture, he was riding the most primitive version of the flying motorcycle in the air. Wang Tan's first reaction was, "Damn, it's the same as I thought." Wang Tan, who studied industrial design, also wanted to make such a multi-rotor manned aircraft for a long time, but he still thought Zhao Deli's was too ugly.
That was originally the year Zhao Deli set for himself to settle down. He wanted to ride a flying motorcycle to fly across the Yellow River to pay tribute to Ko Shu-leung. If he succeeded and realized his dream, he would stop; if he failed, he would also stop because he was 40 years old and needed to be realistic. His two children still needed to go to school. But before he flew, some media reports brought him new opportunities and hopes.
Wang Tan is the most important one of these hopes. He wanted to find Zhao Deli to cooperate, "He can make it fly, and I can make it beautiful and good-looking." He contacted Zhao Deli. After chatting a few times, the other party asked him to help draw a few pictures.
"The design company is most afraid and hates to hear 'Can you help me draw a few pictures'", because it is easy to be taken advantage of. But Wang Tan thought about it and didn't explain much, "Okay, I'll draw for you." He drew four or five different flying motorcycles. In order not to be taken advantage of, he took the pictures and beer from Qingdao to Dongguan to have a face-to-face talk with Zhao Deli.
Almost the same as He Xiaopeng's experience, he also flew a circle first, and that feeling made him shocked and unforgettable. But what was even more shocking was that this technology company he originally envisioned had only two people, and the office was just a simple small storefront, which was a huge gap.
That was the most down-and-out period for Zhao Deli. The money he made from doing business was exhausted due to the frequent replacement of parts during his repeated test flights. The team was only left with his nephew and him.
On the day they met, Wang Tan and Zhao Deli talked until the early morning, and the Qingdao beer they brought was almost drunk. Zhao Deli asked him, "Would you like to join me?" Wang Tan almost agreed on the spot with the influence of alcohol, but he suddenly remembered, "I came to make money from him." He had already thought about how to charge the design fee for several phases of the plan on his way here.
Wang Tan said he would consider it and ran back to Qingdao. At that time, he founded a design company in Qingdao, which had become somewhat famous locally and was on the rise.
If Zhao Deli's insistence on doing this is his obsession with flying, then Wang Tan's obsession is his pursuit of technology.
Making a manned aircraft that can change the way humans travel is very attractive to him. It can be said that at the moment of the test flight, he was already "captured" by Zhao Deli.
He began to design T1 - Huitian's first aircraft with an exoskeleton cockpit. Zhao Deli wanted to use it to attract investment. He originally thought it could be completed within three months, but in the end, he found that more and more energy and resources were tilted towards it. He even recruited a dedicated engineer for it, and many of the company's original large-scale projects, such as designing the MRI machine for the hospital, were also lost due to his lack of attention. In the end, the entire company's resources were invested in the design of T1.
T1 product image
There was no contract and no money. A verbal agreement made Wang Tan invest himself and his company in Huitian. What Zhao Deli could give him was just an empty title of a company boss and some non-existent shares. When the company had no money, he even paid 1 million yuan himself. So later, some people in the company said, "Zhao Deli is a madman, and Wang Tan is a fool."
At that time, they did not figure out how to commercialize it. They acted on intuition and simply believed that "if the thing is well made, it will shine like gold." Wang Tan said that if one day Zhao Deli told him that he couldn't do it anymore and he was going to cook (Zhao Deli used to run a restaurant), then he would go back to Qingdao to start over.
In 2020, if He Xiaopeng hadn't come, this small team driven by dreams would most likely face dissolution again in three months.
On the day they met, He Xiaopeng did not promise to invest before leaving, and Zhao Deli was worried, but he was also used to it, "I have been rejected too many times, but I think there will always be a chance to succeed. I don't know which time it will be, and I don't know if I can wait for that time."
But on the way back, He Xiaopeng called and asked Zhao Deli and Wang Tan to go to his office next Wednesday. "At that time, we were very excited when we heard it." Originally, Wang Tan was going to go back to Qingdao for a few days, but soon the other party called again and advanced the meeting time to next Monday. Wang Tan simply didn't go back.
On the day they went, Wang Tan, Zhao Deli, and another doctoral engineer sat in Zhao Deli's old Crown sedan, which no one knew how many hands it had passed through, rehearsing the questions that He Xiaopeng might ask each of them after the meeting.
After arriving at the office, He Xiaopeng asked, "What do you think about if Xiaopeng Automobile or I join?" Wang Tan thought, this question was prepared, and Deli would definitely be able to answer it. As a result, He Xiaopeng pointed and said, "Wang Tan, you answer."
Wang Tan had never thought about this, but he couldn't show it, "Low-altitude aircraft must be the future of humanity. We are working hard to do this ourselves, and we will definitely make it big in the future. But Xiaopeng's joining can make this thing great." Later, when he recalled, Wang Tan felt that his answer was quite witty, and it could be seen that He Xiaopeng was also very satisfied.
In the Beijing Auto Show in October 2020, He Xiaopeng introduced Xiaopeng Huitian in his speech. When he called the names of Wang Tan and Zhao Deli, the two got up and greeted the crowd.