EHang reveals plan to introduce UAM trial with test flights in Linz, Austria

EHang is to imple­ment a tri­al of an Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) oper­a­tion in the city of Linz, Aus­tria, with test flights using its 216 aer­i­al autonomous vehi­cle (AAV) planned ‘for the near future’.

In light of the dis­rup­tive poten­tial of UAM, the com­pa­ny estab­lished strate­gic part­ner­ships with FACC and Linz AG in 2019, local part­ners with expe­ri­ence in urban pub­lic trans­porta­tion and charg­ing infra­struc­ture.

The three par­ties have agreed to join togeth­er and help trans­form Linz into a UAM pilot city, by con­duct­ing pas­sen­ger flights and goods trans­porta­tion with autonomous air taxis in urban areas.

EHang Founder, Chair­man and CEO Huazhi Hu, said: “We will imple­ment the whole val­ue chain that is nec­es­sary for UAM oper­a­tions, as well as demon­strate pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence jour­neys as well. Book­ings sys­tems, board­ing process­es and after­mar­ket ser­vice ques­tions will play a role.

“In the course of the end-to-end process we will also be able to learn and improve our solu­tions on the go. We need to start think­ing about imple­men­ta­tion today, par­al­lel to the ongo­ing reg­u­la­to­ry process­es as both will ben­e­fit from each oth­er. Last but not least, we want to involve the peo­ple and let them touch, feel and expe­ri­ence UAM as far as pos­si­ble today.”

Over the course of the test flight, var­i­ous aspects will be care­ful­ly stud­ied such as the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of imple­men­ta­tion in urban areas, accep­tance by the city’s pop­u­la­tion and the expect­ed pos­i­tive impact on its envi­ron­ment.

A suit­able test­ing route run­ning over unin­hab­it­ed areas to the ver­ti­ports will be deter­mined with­in Linz, with con­struc­tion planned for 2021.

Andreas Per­ot­ti, Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer of EHang Europe, shared the com­pa­ny’s UAM use cas­es — includ­ing Linz — at last week’s Urban Air Mobil­i­ty vir­tu­al con­fer­ence — organ­ised by the Avi­a­tion Week Net­work.

He said: “Linz is not too big and not too small. It’s a region­al cap­i­tal with around 200,000 inhab­i­tants and a tech city with a huge inno­va­tion cul­ture — the city gov­ern­ment are very engaged and moti­vat­ed to be at the fore­front in this area.”

Per­ot­ti added that because Linz is sit­u­at­ed on the Riv­er Danube — Europe’s sec­ond-longest riv­er — it will also ‘enable safe oper­a­tions and min­imise any risk direct­ly in urban envi­ron­ments, mak­ing reg­u­la­to­ry process­es much eas­i­er.’

Talk­ing about EHang’s part­ner­ship with Linz AG, he added: “They are a per­fect part­ner because they’re a inter-dis­ci­pli­nary com­pa­ny touch­ing many areas that are nec­es­sary to pro­vid­ing an UAM eco-sys­tem — from pub­lic trans­port to ener­gy pro­duc­tion for the city, to ship­ping and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions.”