Newszy: XPENG AEROHT, Asia’s largest flying car company, has marked a major milestone in its global expansion with the successful public manned flight of its modular flying car, the Land Aircraft Carrier, in Dubai. The event also saw record regional orders for 600 vehicles and the announcement of the company’s new global brand identity, ARIDGE.
The manned flight demonstrated the Land Aircraft Carrier’s controllability and reliability under real-world conditions. It followed XPENG AEROHT’s receipt of a special flight permit from the UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), making it the first Chinese flying car company to obtain permission for an overseas manned aircraft flight.
The Dubai showcase was attended by dignitaries including H.H. Sheikh Al Mur bin Maktoum Al Maktoum, H.H. Sheikh Humaid Abdulla Rashed Ahmed Almualla, and Ms. Ou Boqian, Consul General of China in Dubai, along with members of the local Chinese community and more than 100 international media outlets.
During the event, XPENG AEROHT signed purchase agreements with the UAE-based Ali & Sons Group, Qatar’s Almana Group, Kuwait’s ALSAYER Group, and the Chinese Business Council in the UAE. The 600-vehicle order represents the largest overseas bulk purchase recorded in the flying-car sector and brings total global pre-orders for XPENG AEROHT’s models to more than 7,000 units. The Middle East is expected to become the company’s first international consumer market, with sales projected to begin as early as 2027.
The Land Aircraft Carrier is the world’s first modular flying car to reach mass production. Its air module, stored within a ground “mothership” vehicle, can detach and reattach automatically with a single command, allowing seamless transitions between driving and flying. The vehicle supports both automatic and manual flight modes, featuring a single-stick control system that merges six operations into one joystick for intuitive piloting.
XPENG AEROHT has completed an intelligent manufacturing facility in Guangzhou capable of producing up to 10,000 units annually, combining aviation-grade standards with automotive-scale efficiency. Customer deliveries of the Land Aircraft Carrier are scheduled to begin in 2026.
In parallel, the company has made steady progress toward certification. The Type Certificate (TC) application for the flight body (code-named X3-F) and the Production Certificate (PC) application for the airframe have both been accepted by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), marking a significant step toward mass-production compliance under aviation-grade oversight.
Building on this momentum, XPENG AEROHT announced that it will operate globally under the new brand ARIDGE. The name, derived from “Air” and “Bridge,” reflects the company’s founding vision of connecting the sky and the earth and of making flying as accessible as driving. The rebrand signifies the company’s transition from a pioneering R&D phase to large-scale commercialisation and international expansion.
Under the ARIDGE name, the company is also developing the A868, a high-speed, long-range flying car featuring full tiltrotor technology and a hybrid electric powertrain. With a range exceeding 500 kilometres, a top speed of more than 360 km/h, and a six-seat cabin, the A868 extends the company’s product line into business travel and urban air-mobility services.
From its first Middle East demonstration flight of the X2 in 2022 to its CES 2024 debut and now the Dubai manned flight of the Land Aircraft Carrier, XPENG AEROHT, now ARIDGE, has advanced rapidly toward real-world adoption of flying cars. The latest achievements underline how far the company has come in turning the long-held vision of personal flight into a practical reality.