EHang’s Founder Hu Huazhi talks about the company’s rapid rise to Global Air Taxi News

It’s been a busy year for Chi­nese AAV devel­op­er EHang, but one that is already prov­ing to be incred­i­bly excit­ing for the com­pa­ny.

Despite Covid-19 ground­ing the world to a halt, the Guangzhou-based firm has been push­ing on with its busi­ness and has made some sig­nif­i­cant announce­ments. In Feb­ru­ary, it demon­strat­ed the abil­i­ty of its AAVs dur­ing Chi­na’s out­break — by trans­port­ing urgent med­ical sup­plies and per­son­nel between hos­pi­tals.

In April, it announced excit­ing plans to con­struct the world’s first E‑port, with the aim of it being com­plete and ful­ly oper­a­tional by the end of the year. And more recent­ly, it obtained the world’s first com­mer­cial pilot oper­a­tion approval from the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion of Chi­na (CAAC), to use its pas­sen­ger-grade 216 AAVs for air logis­tics pur­pos­es.

So with that in mind, Glob­al Air Taxi News spoke to EHang’s Founder, Chair­man and CEO, Hu Huazhi, to get an insight into how the com­pa­ny began and where he thinks EHang will have the most impact in the urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket.

Mr Huazhi majored in com­put­er sci­ence and worked in IT before he found­ed EHang, main­ly pro­vid­ing the com­mand-and-dis­patch-sys­tem for the Bei­jing Olympics, Shang­hai World Expo and Guangzhou Asian Games.

GATN: Can you tell us a bit more about your career back­ground and the idea behind set­ting up EHang?

Hu Huazhi: As an avid recre­ation­al pilot of heli­copters and fixed-wing air­craft, I saw air­plane acci­dents claim the lives of two of my close friends and was inspired to design a safer way to fly. In 2014, I found­ed EHang togeth­er with my team­mates and expand­ed on the ini­tial safe­ty design to devel­op a ful­ly autonomous flight sys­tem.

EHang unveiled the world’s first autonomous ser­i­al vehi­cle (AAV), the EHang 184 at CES in 2016 and so far have upgrad­ed it into EHang 216, a two-seater pas­sen­ger-grade AAV with 16 pro­pellers.

What are the com­pa­ny’s main goals and ambi­tions in the mar­ket?

Our mis­sion is to make safe, autonomous, and eco-friend­ly air mobil­i­ty acces­si­ble to every­one. We posi­tion our­selves as a solu­tion provider instead of just a man­u­fac­tur­er, pro­vid­ing hard­ware, soft­ware, infra­struc­tures, ser­vices, etc, to built up a urban air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem.

As the first list­ed com­pa­ny of the UAM indus­try, we will con­tin­ue to explore the bound­aries of the sky to make fly­ing tech­nolo­gies ben­e­fit our life in smart cities.

What can you tell us about EHang’s AAV mod­el and how would it work in a com­mer­cial oper­a­tion?

With high-speed com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­work, every EHang AAV is con­nect­ed to EHang com­mand-and-con­trol-cen­tre, which pro­vides the five core func­tions of mon­i­tor­ing, dis­patch­ing, con­trol­ling, pre-warn­ing and record­ing the net­worked AAVs. Pas­sen­gers only need to select the des­ti­na­tion on the on-board tablet, and then EHang AAV will per­form the pre­de­ter­mined flight path autonomous­ly.

EHang brings urban mobil­i­ty to the sky with the world’s lead­ing urban air mobil­i­ty plat­form, which includes full-ser­vice oper­a­tions sup­port for AAV cus­tomers includ­ing train­ing, main­te­nance, com­mand-and-con­trol cen­ter set-up, and flight mon­i­tor­ing.

As of 24th March, 2020, our pas­sen­ger-grade AAVs have com­plet­ed a great amount of tri­al or demo flights in six coun­tries in the USA, Europe and Asia, and we have entered into strate­gic part­ner­ship with 4 city gov­ern­ments to ini­ti­ate UAM pilot pro­gramme in Chi­na, Aus­tria and Spain.

We look for­ward to build­ing more part­ner­ships with oth­er busi­ness­es, city gov­ern­ments, reg­u­la­tors and investors glob­al­ly to achieve this strate­gic goal and ben­e­fit­ing togeth­er from fast grow­ing demands for UAM glob­al­ly.

As we progress, we have applied our EHang AAVs in var­i­ous use cas­es includ­ing as aer­i­al sight­see­ing, emer­gency res­cue and med­ical aid etc.

Recent­ly, we par­tic­i­pat­ed in a flood emer­gency response exer­cise recent­ly orga­nized by the local gov­ern­ment in Shaoguan, Chi­na and ful­ly demon­strat­ed the effi­cien­cy, automa­tion, and cen­tral­ized man­age­ment of our AAV tech­nol­o­gy in an emer­gency appli­ca­tion by exer­cis­ing large-scale and cen­tral­ized AAV oper­a­tions.

What are the advan­tages when using pas­sen­ger-grade AAVs instead of ground trans­porta­tion?

As we all know, urban con­ges­tion and pol­lu­tion have become a headache for most metrop­o­lis around the world as there are more and more peo­ple and pri­vate cars. As the ground traf­fic is com­ing to its max capac­i­ty, the full poten­tial of the air above us remains unex­plored and it explains the promis­ing future of eco-friend­ly per­son­al air trav­el serv­ing as a real­ly fea­si­ble appli­ca­tion sce­nario of urban air mobil­i­ty.

We seek cost-effi­cient solu­tions for many of the chal­lenges of urban life through its AAV plat­form. AAVs can short­en trav­el time, lessen pol­lu­tion, expe­dite emer­gency ser­vices, increase con­ve­nience, and save indi­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es time and mon­ey.

How soon could we see these types of AAVs in the sky as a new method of trans­porta­tion?

I believe it will become a real­i­ty in the near future. On 5th Decem­ber, 2019, our EHang pas­sen­ger-grade AAVs per­formed simul­ta­ne­ous flight in the down­town area and cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict of Guangzhou, mark­ing a major mile­stone as EHang pre­pares for the launch of com­mer­cial oper­a­tions of our autonomous fly­ing taxis.

The pilot pro­gram enables us to test more flight routes and E‑port before mov­ing into pas­sen­ger-grade com­mer­cial oper­a­tions. Recent­ly, we joins hands with LN Hold­ings, a Shen­zhen-list­ed tourism plat­form com­pa­ny, to build the world’s first “UAM” theme hotel and eight jour­nal­ists took rides on EHang 216 for aer­i­al trips over LN Gar­den Hotel.

We believe that this col­lab­o­ra­tion will not only broad­en the use cas­es for AAVs, but will also expand the part­ner­ships in the exist­ing ecosys­tem and make urban air mobil­i­ty a pow­er­ful real­i­ty soon.

We’ve seen how effec­tive AAVs are in the fight against Covid-19 and in emer­gency res­cue mis­sions. Have any com­pa­nies shown any inter­est in pur­chas­ing your AAVs and if so, are you able to dis­close any names and how many they have ordered?

Dur­ing the out­break of COVID-19, we also applied our AAV tech­nol­o­gy in med­ical emer­gency trans­port uses to com­bat the Covid-19 out­break in Chi­na. Our AAVs not only help do air inspec­tion and broad­cast virus pre­vent mes­sages but also trans­port med­ical sup­plies and per­son­nel in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions.

Suc­cess­ful flights have demon­strat­ed EHang’s capa­bil­i­ties in deliv­er­ing safe and high qual­i­ty AAVs to meet mis­sion-crit­i­cal demands in real life. We did receive some pur­chase inten­tions of our AAVs yet we are unable to dis­close any mes­sages about our poten­tial clients.

The news about EHang build­ing the world’s first E‑port this year is very excit­ing. What impact do you think it will have on the rest of the world, and are you able to tell us when con­struc­tion is like­ly to begin? 

The E‑port will accel­er­ate the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of EHang AAVs in the tourism indus­try. The city of Hezhou is a pio­neer in air tourism, and this project will make it mod­el for air tourism inno­va­tion around the world. The E‑port is planned to be com­plet­ed and oper­a­tional by around the end of 2020.

Does EHang plan to build and open more E‑ports in future? If so, do you have an idea of loca­tions?

EHang wel­come more part­ners to join us and embrace the oppor­tu­ni­ty to a pro­vide safe, autonomous, and green approach to trav­el and sight­see­ing.

What excites you the most about the urban air mobil­i­ty indus­try and why?

I think it should be the infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties of the UAM indus­try. Accord­ing to a research released by the Unit­ed Nations in 2018, by 2050, 68 per cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion will reside in urban areas, up from 55 per cent as of today.

This increas­ing urban­i­sa­tion brings tra­di­tion­al two-dimen­sion land based trans­porta­tion net­works to their lim­its. Urban air mobil­i­ty will add a new dimen­sion by using the emp­ty low-atti­tude air­space over large urban areas and pro­vides there­fore a large future busi­ness poten­tial.

And EHang have con­crete research to sup­port the devel­op­ment of our core busi­ness as well. On 15th Jan­u­ary, 2020, we pub­lished our first white paper on the future of trans­porta­tion and Urban Air Mobil­i­ty and research shows that a straight-line trip on an AAV could be cheap­er for the user than a cur­rent New York City taxi ride cov­er­ing the same dis­tance, all while still being prof­itable to the oper­a­tor.

How do you think the urban air mobil­i­ty indus­try will change the way peo­ple trans­port between cities?

UAM is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent to the gen­er­al “smart city” con­cept, which aims to improve over­all trans­porta­tion expe­ri­ences in speed, con­ve­nience and effi­cien­cy. It improves trav­el effi­cien­cy not only through its high­er cruise speed com­pared to cars, but also by using short­er, more direct routes that do not get con­gest­ed.

Fur­ther­more, a shared econ­o­my of AAVs means high­er asset util­i­sa­tion and elim­i­nates the need to find park­ing. Thanks to urban air mobil­i­ty, trav­ellers are able to reach new des­ti­na­tions that were less acces­si­ble, such as islands, moun­tains, swamps and forests. It will also min­imise the impact on nature that would have oth­er­wise occurred due to trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture con­struc­tion.

Do you think there are any chal­lenges that need to be addressed?

The tech­nol­o­gy is ready and also author­i­ties are work­ing around the globe to final­ize the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works. The chal­lenge going for­ward is to achieve pub­lic accep­tance in a way that it allows to scale up the mar­ket.

Key for achiev­ing pub­lic accep­tance is to con­duct as many flights as pos­si­ble to show reli­a­bil­i­ty and safe­ty of our prod­uct. We have com­plet­ed a great deal of flight tests in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, the Nether­lands, Qatar, Aus­tria, as well as Guangzhou, Changchun,
Taizhou and oth­er places in Chi­na with zero acci­dents.

We have been and will con­tin­ue work­ing close­ly with glob­al avi­a­tion reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties to devel­op and con­tin­u­al­ly improve stan­dards for AAVs and oth­er urban air mobil­i­ty solu­tions.

Where do you see EHang in 10 years’ time?

We see a great poten­tial for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty both domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al­ly, and are opti­mistic about its devel­op­ment in the next decade. Air taxis will become a pow­er­ful real­i­ty and changes the way we live and trav­el sig­nif­i­cant­ly.