EHang inducted into Japan’s Public-Private Committee for Advanced Air Mobility

EHang has been induct­ed as a mem­ber of Japan’s Pub­lic-Pri­vate Com­mit­tee (PPC) for advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM), a plat­form for world­wide play­ers in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors adopt­ing fly­ing vehi­cles in Japan.

As the only autonomous eVTOL provider among the 56 PPC mem­bers, EHang will con­tribute its indus­try-lead­ing exper­tise in tech­nol­o­gy to pro­mote the AAM ecosys­tem for safe eVTOL air­craft oper­a­tions in Japan.

The PPC was joint­ly estab­lished by Japan’s Min­istry of Econ­o­my, Trade and Indus­try (METI) and the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Tourism (MLIT) in 2018 to dis­cuss eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy and sys­tem devel­op­ment for nation­wide AAM appli­ca­tions and ser­vices with gov­ern­ment min­istries, sci­en­tif­ic research insti­tu­tions, experts, air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers, and ser­vice sup­pli­ers.

The METI and MLIT col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly released a roadmap on imple­ment­ing AAM in soci­ety, includ­ing objec­tives for the Expo 2025 Osa­ka, Kan­sai, Japan, as well as pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion ser­vice in urban areas, tourist areas, moun­tain­ous regions, and iso­lat­ed islands, as well as for logis­tics in times of dis­as­ter. The roadmap also involves devel­op­ment of the unmanned air­craft.

In the past two years, the EHang EH216‑S AAV has expand­ed its tri­al flights foot­print in six cities across Japan for mul­ti­ple demon­stra­tions, which have been wel­comed by the local gov­ern­ment and MLIT, as well as EHang’s cus­tomers and part­ners. This includes the lead­ing Japan­ese air mobil­i­ty dig­i­tal plat­form com­pa­ny AirX, and the Japan­ese aero­space research insti­tu­tion MASC, both mem­bers of the PPC.

Xin Fang, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer at EHang, said: “We are excit­ed to become a mem­ber of the PPC, Japan’s largest alliance for AAM. We believe our exchange and col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er mem­bers, espe­cial­ly backed by our advanced AAV tech­nolo­gies and tri­al flight expe­ri­ence in Japan, will bring new con­cepts for enhanc­ing syn­er­gies to facil­i­tate Japan’s future AAM rev­o­lu­tion.”

Ear­li­er this year, EH216‑S car­ried out Japan’s first pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing flight by an autonomous eVTOL air­craft, fol­low­ing its com­ple­tion of Japan’s first point-to-point flight by an eVTOL air­craft last year.

VIDEO: EHang achieves first pas­sen­ger flight demo in Japan as it con­tin­ues progress in the coun­try