Will it become a reality that drones become the most convenient way to get from A to B? Our reporter took an exclusive test flight in China to find out…
”AM I REALLY FLYING ALONE?”, I call to the Chinese technician on the take-off platform as he checks the drone’s inflight functions. “You definitely are,” he says with a grin and slams the door shut. I look around the cockpit, an austere environment without buttons or switches, a screen simply showing the flight route.
Suddenly a playful electronic tune emanates from within the cockpit while, outside, the rotor blades begin to whirl. My palms adjust to the 78 percent air humidity, then I take off, the aircraft rising quickly with the draft of the propellers felt through the door as everything vibrates.
At a height of 15 metres, the drone stops as if fixed in place, below it a view of the Guangzhou skyline, a city in southeast China. There’s hardly time to be afraid before I sink to the ground again. The last half-metre before touchdown gets a little rough but my first flight with an autonomous drone goes without incident. Not so bad at all, I think.
A future in the skies
Drones like these – and almost all studies on urban mobility agree – will be the future of transport in big cities. On the ground, the limits are already being reached now in terms of both cars and public transport with an increasing need to escape to a third dimension in the airspace some 50 to 200 metres above us. And drones are big business, stock-market analysts almost universally agreeing autonomous passenger drones are a fantastic way to earn money in the foreseeable future… a lot of money.
The race to this source of wealth began long ago, a myriad of companies worldwide trying to develop drones for passenger transport and, with it, a suitable business model. In China, Ehang is focusing its efforts on exactly that and is one of the ten most successful start-ups in the country. And the reason for my visit here is that Ehang already has a pre-production model ready to fly and, in doing so, is making the gargantuan leap from science fiction to reality.
A paris of the future
On paper, the concept makes sense but questions remain: how can drones fly without a pilot at the controls, can the software really ensure thousands of drones will move over a densely populated area without crashing, how much will these drones and the necessary infrastructure cost, and when will we actually have licences for passenger drones. As of now, for me personally, the overriding question is how does it feel to be sitting in an unmanned drone and can there truly be trust of such a system?
The answers lie in the Ehang command centre, located in a replica of the Paris Opera in the World Park of Guangzhou, an area the size of 850 football pitches after a rich businessman reconstructed world-famous landmarks here a few decades ago. Inside its four walls with a nod to the past lies the transport future.
Jialong Chen, a bespectacled and enthusiastic engineer, heads up the research and development department at Ehang, the centrepiece of which is Ehang 216, the company’s pre-production model. “We’ve mounted 16 rotors on eight arms; theoretically up to four can break down at once without jeopardising the flight”. Reassurance of sorts.
Emergency back-up
Chen’s team is made up of China’s top graduates, beginning work straight from their studies in start-ups like Ehang and tinkering away in trainers and shorts on the drones, in particular the software behind its planned flight. The engineers follow the principle of ensuring there is a back-up at every venture in the event of a sudden failure.
Up to four rotors can break down simultaneously, without jeopardising the flight.
For instance, the batteries are available in eight independently mounted units while the software, the core of the Ehang drone, also has extensive protection; three on-board computers, each fitted with two sensors to determine position and speed, are located in the console. Again that’s reassuring but what happens if everything goes wrong at once? “In an emergency, we can take over the autopilot from the command centre and control the drone manually,” explains Chen.
It takes time to charge the battery although, with a quick-charge function, 80 percent of the battery can also be charged in just 45 minutes. A full battery is enough to fly for about 21 minutes during which time the drone can travel 35 kilometres at average speed of 100kph.
For Chen, the key obstacle to overcome is abundantly clear: “The program has to work even under difficult flight conditions but it’s the weight in particular that’s causing us trouble. The drone is still too heavy”.
This is where the Austrian company FACC comes in. From Ried, a small town in Upper Austria, it is a world market leader in the production of lightweight aircraft parts and has been collaborating with Ehang for two years. While the idea and software come from the Chinese, FACC is contributing its expertise in weight-saving and therefore energy-saving high-tech materials. The current version of the Ehang 216 still weighs 380 kilos. At the end of 2019, when regular production starts, the structure of the drone is expected to be 20 to 25 percent lighter.
The back story
None of this would have been possible without Hu Huazhi, Ehang’s founder who studied computer science at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing at the turn of the new millennium. After his studies, he successfully began developing software for cloud services, video control and intelligent urban planning and, in his spare time, the young programmer obtained his pilot’s licence.
When two of his friends tragically died in helicopter crashes in 2012, Huazhi decided to combine his expertise in IT with his passion for flight and claims that, apart from him, hardly anyone else in aviation is interested in issues such as artificial intelligence and software.
Crazy talk
Huazhi, a chain-smoking whizz-kid, gives off more of a vibe of a genius inventor than a savvy businessman, and prefers to work at night, according to his colleagues. As we talk, Huazhi reminisces about the early days: “A drone that flies by itself? People said I was crazy, nobody believed it could work”. Aged 35, he founded Ehang, sat at home at his little 11-inch Microsoft laptop and, as he says, “lived” a whole month, day and night in the software code. “I don’t know how I survived that time”, he says. “I didn’t even look up from the screen when there was food. My wife says it was like she was feeding a dog”, he adds roaring with laughter.
Every evening, he would take his wife and young son to nearby wasteland to test his toy-sized drone. Initially, it did not act as programmed, instead flying wildly through the surrounding area before crashing. “My son cheered, while I was angry and frustrated”. But every time Huazhi and the drone learned something new. Then, in autumn 2013, it finally flew exactly as he wanted – automatically, without any remote control or pilot. He explains: “Precisely, these lines of code from back then are still the core of our software”. That breakthrough paved the way for Ehang to launch Asia’s most successful crowdfunding campaign. Today, its headquarters, a six-storey building in Guangzhou’s business district, now employs about 300 people and rumours persist that it will soon be floated on the US stock exchange.
The future of passenger drones
”Passenger drones,” says Huazhi, “won’t replace conventional local transport like undergrounds and cars but complement it.”
The theory is that air-drone traffic will function via an app used to enter the desired destination, users then look for a so-called Vertiport – one of the take-off and landing platforms strategically distributed over the whole city. The drone will then fly to its designated destination automatically, albeit monitored by a flight control centre. Many studies predict passenger drones will pay for themselves within the first few years, especially for the route between the airport and the city centre. So, could the first Ehang drones fly from, say, Vienna International to its city centre?
Huazhi shakes his head. “When it comes to urban air mobility, we have to get the general public on board,” he says. “I can’t do that with solutions for tourists and businessmen.” Huazhi is instead thinking of the target commuter group. “When people save time on their way to and from work, that will be a major achievement. Drones can’t just be a toy for the rich.”
So, what does it all mean financially? Ehang drones will initially cost about €300,000 each, explains the founder, but private individuals will not actually be able to buy them, for regulatory reasons alone. As far as the price per flight is concerned, Ehang reckons it will be only marginally higher than a normal taxi ride.
The start date
When will passenger drones actually be available to the public? Yelena Zhang used to work for the Chinese aviation authority and, as the person responsible for such official guidelines at Ehang, knows the regulations for passenger drones inside out. With regards to their certification, the problem is that there is currently no legal framework for them. Today, Ehang runs just a few test tracks in China and is trying to obtain special permits to offer sightseeing flights in Chinese cities.
And what about passenger drones? “Things will happen very fast in Asia,” predicts Zhang. She expects operations in China to start in the next year or so. “In the Chinese Ministry of Transport, hundreds of civil servants are working exclusively in this area. The resources are different from in Europe or the USA.”
The issue of the timing of passenger drones in Europe is another matter, her estimations being that the continent will probably get on board in the mid-2020s. Despite the hype and the industry’s eager wait for authorisations, she cannot stress enough the point that “regulation makes us safe”. It is not just about the drones themselves, which she claims are already safe enough, but also about the entire infrastructure from the departure stations to communication with other road users. Imagining the industry’s worst nightmare becoming a reality, she adds: “In the unlikely event of an accident, not only the company in question but the entire passenger drone industry is doomed. So, we cannot sacrifice safety for speed even if it means clearance being delayed by one or two years.”
Public trust
Besides technical and legal hurdles, there is a third major stumbling block: the psychological one with some analysts seeing it as the biggest barrier yet to be overcome. There is some thinking that flight attendants will accompany flights to help consumers overcome their own psychologically barriers and get used to this new mode of transport. Ehang is taking a different approach, as Zhang explains: “There’s no point in having someone to hold your hand. You won’t be able to convince sceptics anyway. It’s not them we’re targeting. We’re counting on enthusiasts who, according to studies, account for more than 50 percent.”
But in order to reassure passengers, at least one human voice from the flight control in the cockpit will be heard on every Ehang flight.
Test flight number two
Ehang’s founder flies with a special permit every day by drone from home to work, thereby saving himself the more typical car trip to the office, and I am the first journalist ever to be allowed to fly this route. As the technicians prepare my flight, the next subtropical downpour is already on the horizon. “We’d better take off right away,” they say.
This time, the drone climbs considerably higher, and at a height of 50 metres it stops before going into an inclined position and flying in a curve. Memories come flooding back of the amusement park school trip where I had to abandon the zip line for fear it was too steep for me. Suddenly, I feel very, very alone up there but, after just a few seconds of rapid flight, the command centre appears behind the treetops. As I disembark, the reality is it was not half as bad as I had imagined. I didn’t even feel sick. I could get used to this.
