The EHang 184 is certainly a sight to behold.
At first glance it looks like someone simply made an enormous drone — and that’s essentially what it is — and then slapped a cockpit large enough for someone to ride in on top of the chassis. And to top it all off, there’s some stylish gull-wing doors that give it an undeniably cool-yet-crazy look.
Unveiled Wednesday at this year’s Consumer Electronic Show, the 184 is the world’s first fully autonomous electric aerial vehicle, designed to fly a passenger around short distances at a low altitude (think more like a helicopter than a plane) without the need for you to man the controls.
Like its smaller drone counterparts, the 184 uses eight large propellers mounted atop four arms to fly around and hover, though an EHang spokesperson said that it’s technically able to land using only one propeller arm if need be. I’m not quite sure how the physics and balancing of that add up, but the company is sticking to that claim.
