XPENG AEROHT flew the X2 over Skydive Dubai on 10 October 2022 in front of some 150 guests, among them the Chinese consulate, the DCAA civil aviation authority and international media. The headline on the release calls it the aircraft’s first flight. The text itself is more careful: it was the first public display after the flight had been through a risk assessment.
That assessment is a SORA, a specific operations risk assessment, and it is the whole story. XPENG obtained a special flying permit from Dubai’s civil aviation authority after drawing up the mitigation plan with the Sanad Academy and the authority itself. XPENG writes that this is the first time a Chinese manned autonomous flying vehicle has completed an operational risk assessment overseas, and that it is the first company to pass the assessment in Dubai in that weight class. Those are XPENG’s own words, and they carry two qualifiers: overseas, and in that weight class. Which international standard the concept of operations was written against is not named.
The X2 is described as the fifth-generation aircraft: two seats, an enclosed teardrop cockpit, a full carbon-fibre body, manual and autonomous modes with one-touch take-off, return and landing. Flight time, altitude, range, speed and battery size are not in the release.
The same day Brian Gu, vice chairman and president of XPENG, gave the opening keynote at GITEX in the Dubai World Trade Centre, where the X2 was exhibited in Za’abeel Hall 3.
The line to today
The release already trailed a sixth generation for XPENG’s Tech Day on 24 October that year, described as a vehicle that drives on the road and takes off vertically using a folding system. That line ends at the Land Aircraft Carrier, which stood on XPENG’s stand at IFA in Berlin in September 2026.
It matters to a European because the flying-car debate in Europe is a regulatory one. EASA asks the same kind of question the DCAA asked here, and the day in Dubai is the first time the aircraft cleared a foreign authority’s assessment.
At the foot of the release sits something a Danish reader can use: XPENG’s European headquarters was established in Amsterdam in 2021, with offices in Copenhagen, Munich, Oslo and Stockholm. That is the earliest date for the Copenhagen office in XPENG’s own archive. The XPENG company page has the rest.
Images: XPENG
Sources
XPENG: the X2 completes its first global public flight in Dubai · 10 October 2022