‘This is the future!’: inside the next generation of electric cars that fly and drive themselves (but the doors are a bit tricky)

‘Are we all going to be driving flying cars in the future?’ Caitlin Cassidy has questions as she sits in the XPeng X2 Flying Car at the EV Motor Show in Sydney. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

I am many things, but a car person is not one of them. I know how to drive, I can fill my tank with petrol, but that’s basically the extent of my knowledge.

The first time I rode in a Tesla was after booking an Uber, and I didn’t know how to open the door. For a long time, if you’d asked me what a Maserati was, I’d have guessed a type of fancy salami.