Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a... flying Cybertruck? Nope, it's a modular flying car that will take to the skies next year.

When I first laid eyes on the Aridge flying car at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin this past September, I didn’t fully understand what I was looking at.

Taking pride of place on the stand belonging to Chinese robotics company Xpeng, there was a van that bore more than a passing resemblance to a Cybertruck. It didn’t have any wings, and it looked far too dense to fly. Sitting next to it was a kind of oversized drone with a cabin just about large enough to fit two people. 

The two vehicles seemed like totally separate entities. It never would’ve occurred to me to assume they were two halves of one system – much less that the drone, with its substantial wingspan, could fold up to fit inside the van.

I now understand that this modular two-part flying car system is known formally as the Aridge Land Aircraft Carrier. The ground vehicle, also known as the mothership, is a chunky 5.5-meter-long van that can be driven with a standard license and fits in most parking spaces. It’s designed to store, carry and deploy the electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, or eVTOL, including its six foldable rotors, which can fly as high as a helicopter for 30km (about 19 miles).

This remarkable creation is the work of Deli Zhao, founder and president of Aridge, which is backed by robotics and auto company Xpeng.

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