Life is wonderful in 2023 — we’ve got tiny computer systems with wonderful cameras in our pockets; large, dirt-cheap (or free!) TVs; vehicles that (kind of) drive themselves — however the place are our flying vehicles and jet packs? The flying vehicles are at the very least in China, or that’s the place they’ll get their first actual business flights, anyway. EHang Holdings stated final week that the federal government there issued it a certification to start out precise passenger trials within the nation.
The corporate will probably be allowed to take passengers on aerial excursions, which Bloomberg reported it should provide by means of native partnerships in Xinjiang province and Shenzen. The “sort certificates,” issued by CAAC, China’s aviation authority, signifies that its E216-S air taxi “totally complies with CAAC’s security requirements and airworthiness necessities.”
The EH216-S aren’t flying vehicles within the sense that a few of us grew up hoping for — you’re not going to elevate off out of your driveway and land on a street to drive your final mile or something. The autonomous, battery-powered air taxi seems like an enormous, remote-controlled drone, solely it may carry two folks by means of the air for brief locations.
Bloomberg’s report says that, in keeping with EHang, the EH216-S can fly for 25 minutes at about 62mph. The corporate didn’t disclose how a lot its excursions will price. The corporate demonstrated a model of its flying taxi within the US again in 2020, flying about 100 folks in Raleigh, North Carolina. The corporate stated then that it might carry about 500–600 kilos of cargo or passengers.
With out FAA approval, although, the market is hard, and a few firms, like Kitty Hawk, have pulled out.