The aircraft looked like a large black and white spider squatting on the ground near a wharf in the southern Chinese port city of Guangzhou, with two rotors at the end of each of its eight legs. There was a growl as the blades began to turn and the vehicle, with two seats but no pilot, rose vertically into the sky.
This was the EH216-S, an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft – or flying taxi – produced by EHang, China’s market leader in the sector. It flew out over the Pearl River before turning back and hovering for a minute over the vertiport before it landed just as it took off, in a straight vertical line.
“Most people who have flown in it feel that it’s like riding in an elevator. It takes off very smoothly, and then flies and lands very smoothly, without much shaking or turbulence,” He Tian Xing, a vice-president at
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