EHang continues EH216‑S passenger unmanned aircraft deployment

EHang is pro­gress­ing towards the Pro­duc­tion Cer­tifi­cate (PC) and Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­tifi­cate (AC) for the EH216‑S pas­sen­ger unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle (UAV) sys­tem, with the full sup­port from the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion of Chi­na (CAAC).

The ini­tial batch of EH216‑S pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing UAVs fol­lows Type Cer­tifi­cate (TC) ear­li­er this month and is sched­uled to roll off the pro­duc­tion line, ground­ed on prin­ci­ples of sci­en­tif­ic integri­ty, exhaus­tive eval­u­a­tion, and para­mount safe­ty and pro­gressed with­in the struc­tured frame­work of Chi­nese Civ­il Avi­a­tion Reg­u­la­tions Part 21 (“CCAR-21”).

The CAAC con­duct­ed rig­or­ous eval­u­a­tions for its per­for­mance met­rics. With that, EHang will pro­gres­sive­ly opti­mise its prod­uct per­for­mance across var­i­ous met­rics to achieve high­er lev­els of pub­lic safe­ty.

The Type Cer­tifi­cate Data Sheet (TCDS) accom­pa­nies the TCs for all avi­a­tion prod­uct cat­e­gories. Oper­at­ing under the ‘pro­gres­sive risk’ prin­ci­ple, the Com­pa­ny pri­ori­tis­es safe oper­a­tions and account­abil­i­ty to the pub­lic to avoid unfore­seen safe­ty chal­lenges in var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions once offi­cial com­mer­cial oper­a­tions com­mence.

EHang has agreed with the CAAC in regards to oper­a­tional lim­i­ta­tions for the ini­tial phase. EHang will grad­u­al­ly lift these oper­a­tional lim­i­ta­tions with the ulti­mate goal to realise com­pre­hen­sive unmanned com­mer­cial oper­a­tions across urban areas.

EHang will posi­tion extra observers in areas that are beyond the oper­a­tors’ visu­al line of sight to sat­is­fy require­ments for beyond visu­al line-of-sight (BVLOS) oper­a­tions.

Like con­ven­tion­al air­craft that take off and land on sol­id ground, the EH216‑S will not oper­ate over water. How­ev­er, accord­ing to spe­cif­ic needs of oper­a­tional spots and route-set­ting require­ments, there will be no restric­tions on water bod­ies like lakes, rivers, sea­side and oth­ers when con­duct­ing aer­i­al tourism and sight­see­ing expe­ri­ences, as well as oth­er low-alti­tude flights in cer­tain urban areas.

Under CAAC’s guid­ance of ‘con­duct­ed tri­al oper­a­tions while advanc­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion’, the EH216‑S pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing UAV has com­plet­ed numer­ous test flights at high-alti­tude, and will fur­ther expand var­i­ous oper­a­tional sce­nar­ios to intro­duce BVLOS flights at high­er alti­tudes.

EHang CEO Huazhi Hu com­ment­ed: “Ensur­ing a rig­or­ous and sys­tem­at­ic approach to the research and devel­op­ment, pro­duc­tion, oper­a­tion, and man­age­ment of aer­i­al vehi­cles remains a core val­ue for the CAAC, EHang, and all our col­lab­o­ra­tors.

“In accor­dance with the CAAC’s safe­ty stan­dards and air­wor­thi­ness require­ments, we are com­mit­ted to ensur­ing the safe­ty of every pas­sen­ger and cement­ing a sol­id foun­da­tion for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.”