Akihabara News (Tokyo) — China’s EHang successfully conducted on June 9 what it called “Japan’s first island-hopping flights of an autonomous eVTOL.”
The flight test saw an EHang 216 flying car (eVTOL) travel about two kilometers between Iheya Island and Noho Island, Okinawa Prefecture. These are small, remote islands north of the main island of Okinawa, connected to each other by a narrow land bridge.
EHang’s partners for the Okinawa demonstration were four Japanese firms–Airport Facilities Co., AirX, CTI Engineering, and Japan Airport Consultants.
“It does not require a large landing facility like a helicopter, and it would be a revolution in air transportation. I would like to promote the innovation of aerial tourism in the near future,” commented Takeya Hirano, general manager of the planning and development department of Japan Airport Consultants.
While there are reasons to doubt that the EH216 will become a leading eVTOL model for Japan’s future air taxi business, it has indisputably jumped out into the lead in terms of practical flight tests in the skies over Japan.
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