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Technology

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a flying car!

This car can fly for 25 minutes with a maximum speed of around 80 miles per hour.

That’s according to Chinese EV maker Xpeng’s affiliate, Xpeng AeroHT.

The company flew its latest experimental drone car during a short test on Tuesday.

It aimed to demonstrate what the future of transportation could look like in China.

As people looked on, the two-seater EV, called the Voyager X2, performed a vertical takeoff and landing in the Hebei province.

AeroHT said test flights do not involve passengers sitting in the car.

A flight engineer at the company said the public response has been “really positive”.

“Our product can operate both autonomously and manually. It is very simple to operate. Even for a beginner, after about an hour of training, you should have a grasp of the basic controls aboard the aircraft. So our autopilot feature requires no manual operation, which eliminates the traditional learning curve associated with conventional aircraft, because a conventional aircraft typically require extensive hands-on training."

The model is intended for short trips within a city area, and the company says it does not emit any carbon dioxide during flight.

As for whether it’d be available to buy, AeroHT said the X2 is an “iterative product that is not intended for sale to the public”.