EHang releases details of its new AAV for short to medium-haul logistics missions

EHang has unveiled a logis­tics ver­sion of its flag­ship 216 autonomous aer­i­al vehi­cle (AAV), which is being devel­oped for short to medi­um-haul mis­sions in urban and rur­al areas.

Known as the EHang 216L, it will have a 200kg pay­load capac­i­ty, which the com­pa­ny says is the largest for mul­ti-rotor AAVs for aer­i­al logis­tics. Pow­ered by a dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion con­fig­u­ra­tion, the EHang 216L con­sists of eight arms and 16 inde­pen­dent motors and pro­pellers.

With such a big pay­load, EHang has said its lat­est AAV can open up more com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties in use cas­es that require fre­quent and point-to-point flight tasks, such as in moun­tain­ous ter­rains with poor road con­di­tions or replen­ish­ing sup­plies in busy inter­na­tion­al ports.

It can also be a pow­er­ful resource in time-crit­i­cal mis­sions, such as aer­i­al emer­gency sup­ply trans­porta­tion and dis­as­ter relief.

EHang’s Founder, Chair­man and CEO Hu Huazhi said: “The EHang 216L will meet the demand for heavy-lift AAVs for short-to-medi­um-haul aer­i­al logis­tics.  With increas­ing pay­loads and flight ranges, aer­i­al logis­tics is expect­ed to be one of the ini­tial com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions of AAVs as it has high­er effi­cien­cies but low­er emis­sions than the con­ven­tion­al ground trans­porta­tion. 

“The launch of the EHang 216L also com­ple­ments our exist­ing aer­i­al logis­tics AAV port­fo­lio, which con­sists of the medi­um-sized Fal­con B and the small-sized GD 2.0X.  It also enables us to meet cus­tomer needs in var­i­ous aer­i­al logis­tics use cas­es.”

Com­ment­ing on the 216L, Edward Xu, EHang’s Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer, added: “Thanks to the devel­op­ment of autonomous aer­i­al tech­nol­o­gy, logis­tics is becom­ing auto­mat­ed and green. The EHang 216L is born for mod­ern air logis­tics that requires more con­ve­nience, safe­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“In the fore­see­able future, EHang 216L will play an impor­tant role in dif­fer­ent use cas­es such as emer­gency med­ical deliv­ery, spe­cial sit­u­a­tion express deliv­ery and off­shore oil and gas trans­porta­tion, to help entre­pris­es reduces costs and improve effi­cien­cies.

“With the expan­sion in our AAV prod­uct line, we believe the future of intel­li­gent air logis­tics has start­ed right here and now.”

Accord­ing to Frost & Sul­li­van, the urban air mobil­i­ty glob­al logis­tics mar­ket could reach US$46 bil­lion by 2023 Chi­na is pro­ject­ed to be the largest region­al mar­ket in the world by then, account­ing for 45 per cent of the glob­al logis­tics UAM mar­ket.