World's First Passenger Drone Lands in China

By Julius Oyekunle
The world’s first passenger drone recently made its first public flights in Lianyungang city, China. Ehang 184 is electrically power charged and requires passengers to strap themselves in the small cabin, set their flight path and push a button. The automated flight system does the rest.
The Guangzhou-based company, which specializes in intelligent aerial vehicles technology, announced that it had achieved a series of manned flight tests carrying one and two passengers.
Forty persons including the deputy mayor of Guangzhou, Ehang founder and CEO Huazhi Hu as well as other officials, were featured in a flight test and posted on YouTube.
The drone can carry a single passenger weighing up to 100kg on a 23-minute flight at sea level at a speed of 100kmh and is able to fly in the midst of fogs and in force 7 typhoon conditions.
Long-range test flights were also conducted at speeds of 130kmh over 8.8km and it involved 150 technical engineers, over 1,000 days of research and development and over 1,000 flight tests. The commercial sales of the drones will be available in the market before the end of the year.