EHang signs agreement with Spanish town to expand urban air mobility in Europe

EHang has estab­lished a strate­gic part­ner­ship with Llíria in Spain as its fourth urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) pilot city, as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to expand its pres­ence in Europe.

The autonomous aer­i­al vehi­cle (AAV) firm signed sim­i­lar agree­ments on the con­ti­nent with Seville in Spain and Linz in Aus­tria. The fourth city is Guangzhou in Chi­na — where the com­pa­ny is based.

EHang will now col­lab­o­rate with Llíria City Coun­cil to devel­op a 3D air mobil­i­ty solu­tion for smart cities and launch a pilot oper­a­tion pro­gramme of pas­sen­ger-grade AAVs, which is designed to explore dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tion sce­nar­ios — includ­ing tourism.

It also intends to improve logis­tics deliv­ery effi­cien­cy through deploy­ing AAVs and lever­ag­ing Llíria’s geo­graph­ic advan­tages close to the city of Valen­cia, one of Europe’s impor­tant ports.

Hu Huazhi, Founder, Chair­man and CEO of EHang, said: “Llíria not only has beau­ti­ful city scenery, but is also well-suit­ed for the deploy­ment of autonomous aer­i­al vehi­cles. We expect EHang’s UAM ecosys­tem to bring a new ‘tech­no­log­i­cal’ land­scape to Llíria, enabling res­i­dents and vis­i­tors to enjoy the con­ve­nience of life in the ‘Smart City’ era. I look for­ward to join­ing forces with oth­er cities around the world to help make ‘Smart Liv­ing’ a real­i­ty.” 

EHang and Llíria City Coun­cil will work togeth­er with the Span­ish Avi­a­tion Safe­ty and Secu­ri­ty Agency to estab­lish the rel­e­vant sys­tems and stan­dards to sup­port this new trans­porta­tion ecosys­tem. 

They also expect to co-devel­op a mod­ernised and inte­grat­ed AAV com­mand-and-con­trol plat­form in Llíria for low-alti­tude air­space and air traf­fic man­age­ment, which will inte­grate the gov­ern­ment demands for AAVs in smart city man­age­ment.

Manuel Civera Sal­vador, May­or of Llíria, said, “We appre­ci­ate EHang choos­ing Llíria for the UAM ini­tia­tive in Europe. Its dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion of this new urban air trans­port vehi­cle will have a pro­found impact on our life and many busi­ness and ser­vice sec­tors in the near future.

“We are very pleased to estab­lish a strate­gic part­ner­ship with EHang to cre­ate a new mode of coop­er­a­tion with not only the over 40 UAM ini­tia­tive cities com­mu­ni­ty in Europe, but also the inter­na­tion­al net­work with advanced expe­ri­ences, to become the fron­trun­ner of this indus­try.”

Llíria joined the UAM Ini­tia­tive Cities Com­mu­ni­ty in Feb­ru­ary 2019, which is one of the Euro­pean Union’s EIP-SCC (Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Part­ner­ship on Smart Cities and Com­mu­ni­ties) projects estab­lished to pro­mote the trans­for­ma­tion of urban three-dimen­sion­al trans­porta­tion.