Chinese society EHang has joined forces with LN Holdings, a travel agency, to add drone tourist transport to the list of services offered at its hotels. The LN Garden hotel in the Chinese city of Nansha will become a sort of “test bench” where the running in of this unusual idea will take place.
Last Saturday the executives of EHang and LN Group signed an agreement for the creation of specific infrastructures for tourist drones, so that hotel guests can take air tours, book their journey and wait for their turn.
Journalists and insiders who attended the signing ceremony had the opportunity to take a few short flights around the hotel in an EHang 216 drone taxi before a lavish (and vaguely kitschy) aerobatic drone light show.
The tourist taxi drones
The 216 EHang Autonomous Aircraft has two passenger capsules surrounded by eight arms, each with two rotors. The declared maximum speed of each of these tourist drones is 130 km / h, and the flight time is 20 minutes.
The Chinese departure of a tourist drone service anticipates other planned initiatives in the world (the most advanced is currently in Dubai). Unsurprisingly: The first passenger drone was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) of 2016 by Chinese entrepreneurs, was the Ehang 184 model.
Since then, the developers of passenger drones have worked to overcome many challenges: mainly noise, capacity and flight autonomy.
