An ultra-lightweight EV and a flying car?

Friday, 29 October 2021

The Ekonk will weigh just 738kg and use an air-cooled battery.

A new Indian electric vehicle maker has announced plans to produce the “lightest EV ever”, weighing a claimed 738kg, while a Chinese startup has also revealed its for-the-masses flying car.

The single-seater EV is called the Ekonk, built by Mumbai-based Vazirani Automotive. Not only will it apparently weigh about half of most combustion-powered cars, but it will also be the fastest car India has ever produced.

Helping that claim is bespoke new battery technology, which uses air rather than liquid to keep everything cool. According to the maker, it is based on biomimicry used by animals to regulate their body temperatures through breathing.

This allowed Vazirani to remove complicated and heavy cooling solutions and, when combined with a body made totally from carbon fibre, achieve its low weight.

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Power is expected to be in the vicinity of 531kW, enough for a 2.54 second 0-100kmh sprint.

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Whether or not the Ekonk will actually make it to production is unconfirmed.

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Meanwhile, if you want your car to grow arms and slice off the heads of pedestrians, check out Xpeng’s latest flying car!

As for power, Vazirani claims a rather healthy peak output of 531kW, enough to hit 100kmh in 2.54 seconds precisely.

“For us, Ekonk signifies our real beginning, where for the first time design and innovation come together. It’s our first vehicle that’s ‘alive’.”

“In the Indian scriptures, Ekonk signifies the beginning of the divine light. The big bang,” Chunky Vazirani, formerly an employee of Rolls-Royce and Jaguar Land Rover, founder of Vazirani, said.

As it stands, the Ekonk is still a prototype, with no word on if or when it will make production.

Meanwhile, over in China, EV maker Xpeng has unveiled a design for a new flying car that will begin mass production by 2024 and cost around $200,000.

It will work by simply bolting two propeller-wielding foldable arms to a car. When extended, they offer a wingspan of about 12 metres. By the looks of the images, the flying car manoeuvres a bit like a helicopter, instead of having the propellers rotate like other VTOL craft.

The design comes from HT Aero, an “urban air mobility” company with ties to Xpeng that pulled US$500 million in funding last week. To date, it has penned six generations of flying passenger vehicles and sold precisely zero.

Bearing in mind that there is little to no legislation in place around actually using a flying car, the 2024 due date seems a little ambitious. But some think that Xpeng is simply defining what the future might look like, as opposed to creating something that will actually be produced.

Tu Le, founder and CEO of auto industry consultancy, Sino Auto Insights, spoke to Fortune, saying that 'Xpeng clearly wants to be known for pushing the envelope and being the most technologically advanced 'mobility' company.”

Building a flying car, 'even if only sold in limited quantities, is still a net positive for them at this point in time.”