Chinese company Guangzhou Automobile Group, better known as GAC Group – which makes EVs under the Aion brand, has unveiled a futuristic-looking electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle (eVTOL) dubbed Gove.
Designed to be an all-in-one mobility solution, the concept’s most impressive feature is that it splits in half – the upper flying pod detaches from the lower base vehicle and takes the single passenger where he or she needs to go, while the autonomous wheeled base scoots away on its own and heads back to its docking station, wherever that may be.
As you can imagine, as cool and Jetsons-like the Gove may be, it's still a long way away from becoming a reality and finally fulfilling the age-old promise of flying cars. One of the reasons is that the vehicle itself isn't ready for prime time just yet, although Electrek writes that the flying pod has already made a successful first flight, and another reason is that countries all over the world will most probably have a very hard time creating a legal framework for something like this.
Gallery: GAC Gove eVTOL concept
The Gove, which stands for “GAC, On the Go, Vertical, and EV,” was unveiled during the group's Tech Day event in China and features a dual-backup multi-rotor flight system for the VTOL flying pod, while the lower driving half has the company's autonomous ADiGO-Pilot system embedded.
Tech specs like power output and range haven't been provided, but seeing how the Gove is designed to replenish its batteries on its own and fly people on their daily commute, these things should be more or less irrelevant in a future where vehicles will be more like appliances and less like lovable machines, and where driver involvement will probably be close to nonexistent.
Engineers and futurists alike have been promising us flying cars for over a century, but as we all know, that hasn't happened yet, at least not in the way envisioned in magazines over the years. With this being said, humanity might finally invent a usable flying car like those shown in the hit TV cartoon series The Jetsons that aired in the 1960s and 1980s.
Besides GAC, companies like Xpeng and Alef are working to make eVTOLs a reality. But what do you think about this: will we ever get to see flying cars on the streets and in the skies of the future? Let us know in the comments section below.
