EHang completes flight tour in Korea as its begins to explore region’s Urban Air Mobility market

EHang has com­plet­ed maid­en flights in three loca­tions in Korea, as part of a tour which sig­ni­fies the start of the com­pa­ny look­ing into the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket in the region.

In an announce­ment made today (Tues­day), EHang’s 216, two-seater aer­i­al autonomous vehi­cle under­took the flights in Seoul — South Kore­a’s cap­i­tal city — Daegu, and Jeju Island.

Dur­ing the flight tour, EHang test­ed mul­ti­ple busi­ness cas­es for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, includ­ing pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion, emer­gency med­ical ser­vice and aer­i­al sight­see­ing. In Seoul, EHang’s 216 took off from Yeoui­do Island in down­town and flew autonomous­ly over a dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed area.

The sec­ond flight was done in Suseong Dis­trict, Daegu City, to deliv­er a pack­age con­tain­ing a 119 fire emer­gency kit and AED mate­ri­als. The last flight was done in Jeju Island, when the EHang 216 flew over the coast­line to demon­strate the real use case of aer­i­al sight­see­ing.

The project was announced by the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture and Trans­port (MOLIT) ear­li­er this year, with the aim to com­mer­cialise Urban Air Mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions between 2023–2025. Seoul, Daegu, and Jeju Island were all select­ed as pilot sites for the ‘Kore­an Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (K‑UAM) Roadmap’.

In a press release about the flight tour, it said: “The Kore­an flight tour was com­plet­ed after obtain­ing the first SAC (Spe­cial Cer­tifi­cate of Air­wor­thi­ness) issued for a pas­sen­ger-grade AAV by MOLIT.

“Suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the maid­en flight tour may lead to oppor­tu­ni­ties for future coop­er­a­tion between EHang and its Kore­an part­ners in poten­tial UAM oper­a­tions. EHang will work with its part­ners in poten­tial smart city trans­for­ma­tions with its lead­ing AAV tech­nolo­gies.”

Seo Jeong-hyup, Act­ing May­or of Seoul, said the city gov­ern­ment strives to ensure that the human dream of safe­ly fly­ing can become real­i­ty for Seoul cit­i­zens, which will sup­port the future indus­try of Korea.

And Suseong Dis­trict, locat­ed in the cen­tral urban area of Daegu, has said it plans to launch more aer­i­al routes in stages, based on the EHang 216 flight, help­ing to pro­mote the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion process of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty.

“To tack­le the traf­fic con­ges­tion, we will try our best to devel­op UAM and turn it into a new engine for our eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment,” said Kim Dae-Gweon, may­or of Suseong Dis­trict in Daegu.

Won Hee-Ryong, the Jeju Spe­cial Self-Gov­ern­ing Province, added: “To fur­ther pro­mote UAM devel­op­ment, Jeju Island is con­sid­er­ing var­i­ous mea­sures, includ­ing the set-up of spe­cial funds and poli­cies, fos­ter­ing tal­ents and sup­port­ing rel­e­vant enter­pris­es. “

With the sup­port of MOLIT and the local gov­ern­ments, the suc­cess of the first phase of EHang’s UAM Oper­a­tion Plan for Korea set anoth­er mile­stone in the company’s glob­al UAM devel­op­ment, and fur­ther demon­strat­ed the safe­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of EHang’s AAV tech­nol­o­gy.

The Kore­an flight tour lays a sol­id foun­da­tion for future busi­ness expan­sion in Korea with poten­tial accel­er­a­tion to its UAM oper­a­tions. EHang will join hand with all par­ties to accel­er­ate devel­op­ment of UAM.