EHang completes first test flights of its 216 AAV in Japan

EHang has con­duct­ed maid­en test flights in Japan with its two-seater 216 eVTOL, which is the first pas­sen­ger-grade autonomous air­craft to be grant­ed per­mis­sion to fly in open air­space in the coun­try.

The com­pa­ny obtained a tri­al flight per­mit from the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Tourism of Japan (MLIT) with a local part­ner. One of the tri­al flights was com­plet­ed at the ‘Lead­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty’ event, which was organ­ised togeth­er with the Okaya­ma Kurashi­ki Mizushi­ma Aero & Space Indus­try Clus­ter Study Group (MASC) at Kasao­ka Air Sta­tion in Okaya­ma Pre­fec­ture.

MLIT’s chief cab­i­net sec­re­tary Kato Kat­sunobu appoint­ed his sec­re­tary Sug­i­hara Yohei, to attend the event and deliv­ered a speech on his behalf.

He said: “At present, many com­pa­nies around the world have launched such fly­ing car projects, and are con­duct­ing research and devel­op­ment and demon­stra­tion projects. As the gov­ern­ment, we will active­ly improve avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tions while sup­port­ing pri­vate enter­pris­es in a time­ly and appro­pri­ate man­ner.”

In 2018, the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment estab­lished the ‘Pub­lic-Pri­vate Coun­cil for Air Trans­porta­tion Rev­o­lu­tion” and for­mu­lat­ed a roadmap towards air trans­porta­tion rev­o­lu­tion. The coun­cil aims to start com­mer­cial ser­vices of trans­port­ing goods and peo­ple via fly­ing vehi­cles by 2023, with grad­ual expan­sion from rur­al areas to urban areas.

Accord­ing to the blue­print, the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau of the MLIT is study­ing and improv­ing relat­ed sys­tems such as the type and air­wor­thi­ness safe­ty stan­dards for fly­ing cars and the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of pilots.

Oth­er guests includ­ed Ito Kaori, May­or of Kurashi­ki City, Okaya­ma Pre­fec­ture; Yoshi­fu­mi Kobayashi, May­or of Kasao­ka City, Okaya­ma Pre­fec­ture; Inoue Mine­ichi, Head of the Kurashi­ki Cham­ber of Com­merce and Indus­try, and Sug­i­mo­to Tet­suya, Head of Kasao­ka Cham­ber of Com­merce and Indus­try

Hashimo­to Gaku, mem­ber of the Japan House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, added: “I am very pleased that Japan’s first tri­al flight of a fly­ing car took place in the land of Okaya­ma. We have high expec­ta­tions for fly­ing cars as a new gen­er­a­tion for the growth indus­tries. We look for­ward to devel­op­ing fly­ing cars as social ser­vices through pub­lic-pri­vate coop­er­a­tion.”

In future, EHang and MASC will col­lab­o­rate to fur­ther devel­op new air trans­porta­tion use cas­es in Japan.

EHang released the first images of its oth­er eVTOL in devel­op­ment, the VT-30, last week. It will trav­el up to 300km for more than 90 min­utes, car­ry­ing two pas­sen­gers at a time.