Skip to main content

CEO takes ride in passenger drone to demonstrate that it’s safe

The idea of an autonomous flying taxi may sound terrifying to some, but for Chinese outfit EHang, the dream of creating a small aerial vehicle for transporting people at speed across cities is fast becoming a reality.

The simply named “184” first appeared at CES in Vegas just over two years ago, and in recent days the company released a video showing one of its latest manned test flights. And no, it didn’t crash.

Looking something like a giant quadcopter, the 184 lets you climb inside, press a destination on the control panel, and … well, that’s it. You don’t need any pilot training to take a trip in the 184, instead you just let its autonomous technology take care of everything.

To show just how much faith he has in his passenger drone, EHang CEO Huazhi Hu recently climbed inside for a test flight, shown in the video above.

He certainly seems happy enough as the 184 zips along, even if his team back on the ground look a tiny bit anxious. And just like the best consumer drones, the personal transporter looks steady and stable in the air.

The video actually shows two different designs of the 184. The first appears to be the original version, with one seat and eight sets of rotors on four arms (yes, that’s how it got its name). The second is the most recent design is a slightly larger with two seats and 16 sets of rotors on eight arms, though EHang appears to be shying away from calling it the 2168 — a wise move considering how long it takes to say.

The Guangzhou-based company says it has now conducted more than 1,000 test flights, with some consisting of a 984-foot (300-meter) vertical climb while carrying a load of up to 507 pounds (230 kg). Flights have traveled as far as 9.3 miles (15 km), with the aircraft reaching speeds of up to 80.7 mph (130 kph). Its maker boasts that it can even handle force-7 typhoon conditions, though in conditions like that we’ll probably hop in a taxi to get across town.

“Performing manned test flights enables us to demonstrate the safety and stability of our vehicles,” Hu said in a release. “Now that we’ve successfully tested the EHang 184, I’m really excited to see what the future holds for us in terms of air mobility.”

The 184 has plenty of competition, though. Only a few days ago we saw the first test flight of the Airbus-backed Vahana self-piloting air taxi, and Uber is developing its own machine. Joby Aviation and Volocopter also have their own vehicles in the works, and we recently learned about the aptly named “Passenger Drone.”

Personal flying machines certainly seem to capture our imagination, as these wackier designs — a flying car that is basically a car with wings attached, a flying bathtub that is exactly what it says it is, and a hobbyist’s extraordinary 72-rotor machine — appear to prove.

Editors' Recommendations

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
This AI cloned my voice using just three minutes of audio
acapela group voice cloning ad

There's a scene in Mission Impossible 3 that you might recall. In it, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) tackles the movie's villain, holds him at gunpoint, and forces him to read a bizarre series of sentences aloud.

"The pleasure of Busby's company is what I most enjoy," he reluctantly reads. "He put a tack on Miss Yancy's chair, and she called him a horrible boy. At the end of the month, he was flinging two kittens across the width of the room ..."

Read more
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more