Abstract:  Flying cars as a new type of vehicle for urban air transportation and future travel, are getting more and more attention in the automotive and aeronautical fields, it has become an important development trend for the transborder integration of automotive and aeronautical technology and industry. This article introduces the connotation of flying cars and the rise of the urban air mobility (UAM) concept. It describes more than one hundred years of a practical exploration process of flying cars and then represents the current research status for UAM of airbuses and air-taxis along with the future development trend of intelligent transportation of air-land amphibious vehicles. Moreover, it discusses the major bottlenecks and impediments confronting the development of flying cars. In addition to the high power density electric propulsion, high lift-drag ratio and lightweight body structure, and low-attitude flight intelligent driving, as the main approaches and key technologies break through the bottleneck performance of flying cars. Furthermore, it proposes the three-stage goals and vision for the development of flying cars in China, and suggests to build a flying vehicle technology innovation system that integrates automotive and aviation transboundary, and to promote the demonstration application of flying cars in urban air transportation and emergency rescue as the key breakthrough for the near future development of the flying car.

Key words: flying car , electric vehicle ,  electric aircraft , urban air mobility (UAM) ,  future smart mobility