Flying Cars Are Here
And China Is Building the Market for Them
A short video has been circulating on Chinese social media. Two single-seat electric aircraft sweep into frame, skimming just above the treetops in tight formation. They bank hard into a sharp left turn — the machines tilting at nearly 45 degrees — then swing around and descend toward an open grass field. Moments later, they hover side by side, rock-steady at just one or two meters off the ground, their eight rotors spinning in a blur. The caption reads: “Single-person aircraft: high-speed turn and precision hover.” This is a flight test — and the pilots are not aerospace professionals, but ordinary people earning their eVTOL license.
This is not science fiction. This is China in 2025, where learning to fly an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL in short) aircraft is becoming a real possibility for ordinary citizens. I recently visited one of the companies making this possible — and what I saw suggests that the age of urban air mobility is arriving faster than most of the world realizes.
Inside AutoFlight
AutoFlight’s facility in Kunshan, near Shanghai, feels less like an aviation factory and more like a technology campus. The company is one of China’s leading eVTOL manufacturers, and walking through their production floor offers a glimpse into what the future of transportation looks like.
The aircraft employ a compound-wing configuration — a patented design that combines the vertical lift capability of a multi-rotor drone with the efficient cruise of a fixed-wing airplane. During take-off and landing, multiple rotors provide lift. Once airborne, the craft transitions to forward flight using its wings, dramatically extending range and efficiency.
What struck me most was holding one of their carbon fiber propeller blades. Over two meters long, it looked substantial — yet I could lift it easily with one hand. The blade was remarkably light but felt solid, engineered to withstand the stresses of flight. This kind of advanced materials engineering is essential for eVTOL: every gram saved extends range and payload capacity.
The control systems are equally impressive. Layers of AI handle the complex aerodynamics of transitioning between hover and cruise, managing multiple rotors, and responding to wind conditions. This artificial intelligence backbone is what makes it possible for ordinary people — not just trained pilots — to operate these aircraft. The driving test video suddenly makes more sense.
AutoFlight’s latest model seats five (including the pilot) and sells for 14 million RMB — roughly $2 million. In Shenzhen, trial air taxi services are already operating at around 20 RMB per kilometer. A flight from Nanshan district to Longgang to visit Huawei’s headquarters would cost a few hundred RMB and take minutes instead of the hour or more spent battling Shenzhen’s notorious traffic. The economics are approaching viability.
Racing Ahead
The technology is maturing. But what about regulatory approval — historically the longest pole in the tent for aviation innovation?
Here, China has moved with remarkable speed. EHang’s EH216-S became the world’s first unmanned eVTOL to receive a Type Certificate from China’s Civil Aviation Administration (CAAC) in October 2023. The Production Certificate followed in April 2024, and in March 2025, EHang obtained the Air Operator Certificate — completing the full regulatory pathway to commercial operations.
AutoFlight achieved its own milestone in March 2024, receiving the world’s first Type Certificate for an eVTOL exceeding one ton. The company has already demonstrated a cross-bay route between Shenzhen and Zhuhai: 20 minutes by air versus 2.5 hours by car.
The contrast with Western competitors is stark. Germany’s Lilium, after raising over $1.5 billion in funding, filed for bankruptcy in 2024 — unable to secure its Type Certificate or find government support. American companies like Joby and Archer continue their certification journeys, but remain years away from commercial service.
Why has China pulled ahead so decisively? The answer goes beyond technology or regulatory efficiency. It lies in how China builds markets for strategic industries.
The Constructive Market
Economist Meng Jie has developed a concept that helps explain what is happening: the constructive market. In strategic and foundational industries, Meng argues, markets do not simply emerge through spontaneous evolution. They are actively constructed by the state, which acts as a “market architect” — shaping demand, coordinating supply chains, building infrastructure, and bearing early-stage risks that private capital cannot.
This stands in sharp contrast to the neoliberal assumption that governments should stand back and let markets form organically. Lilium’s bankruptcy illustrates where that approach leads in capital-intensive, long-horizon industries: private investors eventually lose patience, and without state support, promising technologies die.
China’s low-altitude economy is a textbook case of constructive market-building. The sector has been written into the national Government Work Report for two consecutive years. Thirty provinces have followed with their own low-altitude economy initiatives. The National Development and Reform Commission established a dedicated Low-Altitude Economy Development Department in December 2024.
The numbers are striking: Sichuan province has created a 3 billion RMB industry fund. Shenzhen is investing 12 billion RMB to build over 1,200 take-off and landing pads by 2026. These are not subsidies in the conventional sense — they are investments in creating the infrastructure and ecosystem that makes a market possible.
This is the same playbook that built China’s electric vehicle industry. As economist John Ross has argued, Western advice for China to reduce investment and shift toward consumption-driven growth would be “economic suicide.” Instead, China continues to create new growth engines through strategic industrial investment. The eVTOL sector is the latest example.
A Leapfrog Opportunity
For the Global South, China’s eVTOL industry offers more than an interesting case study — it presents a concrete opportunity. Electric air taxis could allow developing countries to leapfrog traditional transportation infrastructure, much as mobile phones allowed them to skip landline networks.
Building roads through mountainous terrain is expensive and slow. Constructing a network of vertiports is comparatively fast and cheap. For archipelago nations like Indonesia or the Philippines, for countries with challenging topography like Colombia or Rwanda, eVTOL could provide connectivity that would otherwise take decades to build.
The orders are already flowing. A Thai company has signed for 500 aircraft. XPeng AeroHT has received 600 orders from the Middle East. China’s mature supply chain — built on its dominance in electric vehicles — means these aircraft can be produced at costs 30-50% below Western competitors.
The deeper lesson is about development strategy. The constructive market model offers an alternative to waiting for markets to emerge on their own — an alternative where the state actively builds the conditions for new industries to flourish. It is not simply about government subsidies. It is about the systematic construction of infrastructure, standards, supply chains, and demand.
Back to that flight test video: two aircraft banking sharply above the grass, then hovering motionless in the air, their pilots calm and composed. It is a small scene, but it captures something larger — the moment when a technology crosses from experimental to everyday. China is not just building flying cars. It is building the market that makes flying cars possible. And in doing so, it may be charting a path that others can follow.