GAC presents GOVE flying car concept – eVTOL with two parts: passenger drone, 4-wheeled road chassis

Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC Group) recently unveiled a flying car concept called GOVE, which is an acronym for the words ‘GAC, On the Go, Vertical Flight and Electric Vehicle (EV)’.

The GOVE is an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicle that combines a passenger drone equipped with six sets of rotor blades with a four-wheeled chassis to travel on roads.

When travelling on the road, the drone and chassis are connected as one, with the company’s ADiGO autonomous driving system turning the chassis into a fully automated mobile takeoff and landing station.

When it comes time to take to the skies, the drone is separated from the chassis and the brand’s flight control system and multi-object recognition technology enable GOVE to fly steadily and at high altitudes. At this point, the chassis can be operated remotely and sent to a charging station to be recharged – this also allows multiple units to be shared among users.

Finally, during an air-to-ground docking scenario, the flight cabin can be precisely aligned and docked with the chassis. The GOVE comes with a dual-backup multi-rotor power system for redundancy so that the flight cabin continues its scheduled flight even if a single power unit encounters an issue during flight.

GAC says it adopted the MBSE (model-based systems engineering) concept widely used in the aerospace industry to meet flight safety requirements, although it admits it’ll be some time before commercialisation happens due to regulation concerns.

The company claims the GOVE has already completed its maiden flight with an actual human passenger onboard, which serves as proof that this vision of holistic, all-electric mobility could become a reality in the future.

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