EHang’s Air Taxi Nails Autonomous Flight With Passengers on Board in Japan

EHang’s name will be linked from now on to the first flight of this kind in Japan. All the officials and other guests who were attending the event in Oita Prefecture, Japan, at the end of last week, got a glimpse of the future. Two passengers were smoothly and comfortably flown along the coastline of Tanoura Beach, in a compact electric aircraft, with no pilot in the cockpit.

Perhaps not that far in the future, this will be an everyday occurrence in urban centers all over the world. Even though air taxi services will initially be launched in the piloted version, the ultimate goal is to switch to autonomous operations. And this successful demo flight shows that we might be closer to that than we think.

As you can imagine, it took several years and many other test flights to get to this point. Last summer, EHang had reached another milestone. The same air vehicle, the EH12, completed a pioneering tour of four cities in Japan. One of them was Oita, the one where the EH12 would show off its autonomous flight capabilities at the beginning of 2023. The other were Amagasaki, Fukuyama, and Sakaide.

During that tour, the Chinese-made eVTOL had the chance to nail not just one, but several industry-firsts. One of them was the first point-to-point eVTOL demo flight in Japan. Another was flying with its biggest payload at the time: 80 kg (176 lbs). But that was cargo. This year’s success is greater than all others because there were real passengers on board, and no pilot.

This also paves the way for similar demonstrations in the future. There’s plenty of time to practice some more, before the Expo 2025 event in Osaka, Kansai, when air taxi services will officially become available for the public in Japan.

The Chinese manufacturer hasn’t revealed too much about its AAV (advanced aerial vehicle) so far. The EH12 was introduced as a two-passenger, short-range eVTOL. Fitted with 16 electric motors, it can fly at nearly 10,000 feet (around 3,000 meters) and promises a 19-mile range (30 km) on a single charge, at maximum payload capacity.

In any case, the Chinese EH12’s capabilities were impressive enough to convince a European police force to choose it as its first official AAM. The Spanish National Police will therefore become the first security institution in the EU to operate an AAM. And it will be the same one that has now successfully carried passengers in autonomous mode over a coastline in Japan.