EH216 Completes Japan Demo Flight Tour to Mark Countdown to Expo 2025 Osaka

EHang Hold­ings’ EH216 eVTOL has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a demo flight tour across four cities in Japan and expand­ed its foot­print for the first time into the Kan­sai, Kyushu and Shikoku regions after demo flights in Okaya­ma and Fukushi­ma cities last year.

Mark­ing the 1,000-day count­down to the open­ing of the Expo 2025 Osa­ka, Kan­sai, these recent unmanned demo flights includ­ed flights over the sea, believed to be the firsts for an eVTOL vehi­cle in Japan.

The EH216 flight tour explored urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) cas­es such as aer­i­al sight­see­ing over the sea, air mobil­i­ty, and smart logis­tics with the sup­port of EHang’s local part­ners, includ­ing Okaya­ma Kurashi­ki Mizushi­ma Aero & Space Indus­try Clus­ter Study Group (MASC).

In ear­ly July, EH216 per­formed Japan’s first eVTOL demo flight over the sea for aer­i­al sight­see­ing in Fukuya­ma City in Hiroshi­ma Pre­fec­ture, lat­er com­plet­ing Japan’s first eVTOL point-to-point demo flight for air mobil­i­ty in Oita City in Oita Pre­fec­ture.

Last week, EH216 con­duct­ed a demo flight car­ry­ing 80 kilo­grams of car­go for logis­tics trans­porta­tion in Sakaide City in Kagawa Pre­fec­ture. Oth­er than flight demos, EH216 has also been exhib­it­ed in down­town Oita to fur­ther expand pub­lic cog­ni­tion and inter­est in UAM for its future oper­a­tions in Japan.

The Expo 2025 Osa­ka plans to use eVTOL vehi­cles for vis­i­tor trans­porta­tion at the Expo, suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing a demo flight in Ama­gasa­ki City in Hyo­go Pre­fec­ture, wit­nessed by local gov­ern­ment offi­cials and the Con­sulate-Gen­er­al of Chi­na in Osa­ka.

MASC chair­man Hiroshi Kiri­no said: “We are very pleased that we were able to con­duct demo flights in the cities of Ama­gasa­ki, Fukuya­ma, Sakaide, and Oita, which are locat­ed along the coast of the Seto Inland Sea, and wit­nessed by local res­i­dents who were eager to expe­ri­ence the tech­nol­o­gy.

“MASC will con­tin­ue to devel­op cas­es for fly­ing vehi­cles in logis­tics, tourism, emer­gency trans­porta­tion, and dis­as­ter response, and will con­tin­ue to take on the chal­lenges of air­borne busi­ness, includ­ing take­off and land­ing sites.”

EHang founder, chair­man and CEO Hu Huazhi not­ed: “The EH216 demo flight tour has set our foot­print in up to six cities across Japan, and we expect to pro­vide EH216 flights for Expo 2025.”

In Octo­ber 2021, Volo­copter joined the Osa­ka Round­table to bring urban air mobil­i­ty to Japan, and com­mit­ted to fly dur­ing the Expo 2025 Osa­ka Kan­sai, join­ing oth­er com­pa­nies which are part of the round table, includ­ing Japan’s Sky­Drive, and togeth­er with its long-term part­ner and investor Japan Air­lines (JAL).

Last month, EHang announced a strate­gic part­ner­ship with the Agri­cul­tur­al Bank of Chi­na (ABC) that includes cred­it facil­i­ties of RMB1 bil­lion, equiv­a­lent to around $150 mil­lion.