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Straits Times
4 days ago
- Automotive
- Straits Times
For sightseers in China, pilotless ‘flying taxi' rides are on the horizon
EHang's passenger drone, the EH216-S, is a two-seater that can fly up to 30km at a maximum speed of 130 km per hour. ST PHOTO: JOYCE ZK LIM For sightseers in China, pilotless 'flying taxi' rides are on the horizon — Sixteen propeller blades in sets of two whir, growing faster and louder. Then, the 'air taxi' lifts off. It rises vertically off the ground, one gutsy passenger strapped in, as a throng of journalists watches on. He is alone in the two-seater cabin, several storeys high, with no pilot in sight. This scene, seemingly out of the future, takes place very much in the present, on a recent Tuesday in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province. It is a sight that EHang, the company behind the autonomous 'flying taxi', hopes will become more commonplace in China, and around the world. 'In the future, we want to provide such a means of transport that is as normalised as cars,' EHang's vice-president He Tianxing told visiting reporters at the company's Guangzhou headquarters on June 10. That future, for now, is still years away. But the leading Chinese maker of autonomous aerial vehicles (AAVs) - or drones as they are more commonly known - which transport goods among other uses , is moving closer towards the commercial use of its drones to carry people, with a big milestone on the horizon. In the cities of Guangzhou and Hefei, the capital of central Anhui province, people will soon be able to buy tickets to sightsee on EHang's flying vehicles , in what could be a world first. An Ehang subsidiary in Guangzhou and its joint venture company in Hefei in late March received China's first certificates to operate paid services carrying people in the two cities. They are now trialing rides in these locations, allowing staff members and invited guests to have a go on the flying vehicle - also described as an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft - Ehang says . Thereafter, they plan to open ticket sales to the public. One of the routes will bring people to take in river views from above a wharf in Guangzhou while another will fly over a park in Hefei . These flights, EHang says , are to travel in a loop in a pre-set path for an average of five to eight minutes, leaving from and returning to the same spot. The operators have yet to reveal how much tickets will cost or announce a firm date when public sales will begin. The model of eVTOL that has been green-lit for the commercial services, the EH216-S, retails for 2.39 million yuan (S$425,949) on the e-commerce platform Taobao. It has a maximum range of 30 km and a maximum speed of 130 km per hour. The upcoming start of commercial 'human-carrying' drone services in China comes as the country is ramping up the development of its 'low-altitude economy'. This refers to economic activity taking place in airspace less than 1,000m above ground level, below the 9,000m at which commercial planes typically cruise. This emerging industry is a policy priority that has been written into the government's annual work plan since 2024. Already, drones are being put to work in some parts of the world's second-largest economy, delivering food and other goods to consumers, and spraying pesticides across croplands. The commercial sightseeing flights, Mr He tells The Straits Times, are a 'rehearsal' for the wider use of drones as a means of transport. But more infrastructure, he says , is still needed before eVTOLs can serve as air taxis that transport people from one point to another. These include take-off and landing sites, charging stations and parking terminals. For their part, cities in China are stepping up their construction of infrastructure for the low-altitude economy. In Shenzhen, one of six pilot cities for its development, officials plan to have 174 landing sites for eVTOLs and helicopters by 2026. A number of Chinese automakers have also branched into the business of flying cars. They include XPeng, GAC Group, Geely and Hongqi. Mr He said he expects to see some Chinese cities 'which have the necessary conditions' gradually piloting the use of eVTOLs for flights carrying people from point to point in the next two to three years. Apart from the Chinese market, EHang has also set its sights on having its passenger drones fly overseas. The company is developing markets in Asia, Europe and South America, Mr He says , and has 'achieved very positive results' in Japan, Thailand, Spain and the Middle East. EHang Vice President He Tianxing speaks to reporters at the company's headquarters in Guangzhou on June 10. ST PHOTO: JOYCE ZK LIM In Thailand, where EHang carried out demonstration flights in November 2024 with passengers on board, the company 'plans to launch commercial trial operations in (regulatory) sandbox areas opened up by the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand this year', he said . The company's partners in Thailand, he added , are working with the Thai authorities and conducting preliminary surveys of routes and operation sites in the resort island of Phuket. EHang is not the only company with plans for its passenger drones to fly commercially abroad. Joby Aviation, for instance, an American maker of air taxis, aims to start commercial services in Dubai by early 2026. Volocopter, a German company, had earlier announced plans to provide air taxi services carrying people over Singapore's Marina Bay and during the Paris Olympics in 2024, but these did not materialise. The company in December 2024 filed for insolvency, and has since been acquired by a subsidiary of a Chinese company. As firms move towards the commercial adoption of passenger eVTOLs, another hurdle they may have to contend with is whether consumers will put their faith in the novel technology. 'I'm so scared,' said American livestreamer Darren Jason Watkins Jr repeatedly when he test - rode one of EHang's drones earlier in 2025. 'Please pray for my safety,' he said . The online personality better known as IShowSpeed uploaded to YouTube a video of his experience in which he is also seen being reassured of the drone's safety, including through back-up systems that kick in should there be any breakdown. Asked how he would convince people that passenger drones were safe, Mr He told reporters : '(We) welcome you to take a ride -- make sure to ride a few times.' Nikkei reporter Itsuro Fujino said that his ride on EHang's passenger drone felt stable throughout. ST PHOTO: JOYCE ZK LIM He also noted that EHang's eVTOL had received three airworthiness certificates from the Chinese authorities , and highlighted the need for more publicity around the merits of unmanned aerial transport . At Ehang's Guangzhou eVTOL terminal, the drone carrying the one brave passenger landed after a brief spin of about two minutes. Emerging from beneath its gull-wing doors was Nikkei reporter Itsuro Fujino, slightly sweaty. Unprompted, a staff member offered a tissue. A fellow journalist wondered aloud if it was the heat (of more than 30 deg C), or just nerves. What was the experience like, his fellow reporters watching wanted to know. 'It felt stable throughout … there was no scary feeling,' said Mr Fujino, of his maiden ride in an eVTOL. 'It was like riding in a car,' he added. Joyce ZK Lim is The Straits Times' China correspondent, based in Shenzhen. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
RTHK
4 days ago
- Automotive
- RTHK
China's flying car industry quick to commercialise
China's flying car industry quick to commercialise Chinese firm EHang became the first eVOTL-maker in the world to receive a licence to carry passengers commercially. File photo: Xinhua China's flying car-makers could get faster in commercialising compared with global peers given the country's dominance in electric vehicle manufacturing, while top policymakers vigorously promote a "low-altitude" economy as a new driver for national growth. Flying cars or flying vehicles include "electric vertical take-off and landing aircrafts" (eVTOLs) which are a new type of aircraft that utilise electric power for propulsion and are designed to take off and land vertically similar to helicopters, as well as "autonomous aerial vehicles" (AAVs) which are aircraft that operate without direct human control. Speaking on RTHK's "China Perspectives" podcast, Huang Hailong, an assistant professor at the department of aeronautical and aviation engineering at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, noted that the industry has been growing rapidly in the country in recent years, with market size expected to grow four times higher to reach over 2 trillion yuan in about five years, boosted by technological advancements in EV batteries. "From the battery innovation perspective, there are lots of Chinese firms focusing on developing high-energy density batteries, which means that for the same size, same weight of a battery, maybe three years ago it can support just 10 minutes' operation, but with the new technology, it can support 20 or 30 minutes [of flying]," Huang said. He added that while current commercialisation examples of such novel vehicles include those used in agriculture and tourism, they will be able to gradually enrich the urban traffic landscape to make it a more comprehensive three-dimensional system covering land, sea and low-altitude air less than 1,000 metres. The country's innovators, he added, have also moved quickly to take a leap in turning such visions into an everyday reality, with Guangzhou-based EHang in March becoming the first eVTOL-maker in the world to receive a licence to carry passengers commercially with its twin-passenger EH216-S aircraft which has a top speed of 130km/h and a range of 30km. The firm is planning to start offering flights to the public in Guangzhou and another big city - Hefei - by the end of the year, as it forecasts that "flying taxi services" will be viable by 2030. "From the technological perspective, I think this [flying taxi service] is ambitious, but it is still not impossible, because the current trajectory of technological and regulatory and even the infrastructure development is still expanding," he told RTHK. Echoing Huang, Trevor Allen, Head of Sustainability Research at Markets 360, BNP Paribas, noted that the visions of flying cars do show promise as they play into the country's existing industrial strengths - being the world's largest manufacturer of both the batteries such aircraft need, and of electric vehicles, which involve lots of the same technology. "In the EV space, over 80 percent of the components or EV batteries are processed through China today by our calculations. There's a very strong supply chain for creating lithium batteries - particularly for vehicles in that regard. That's going to have a clearer carry-over into this eVTOL urban air mobility space in that sense," he told RTHK. He noted that another distinctive advantage China has in developing the industry is the top-down government guidance and partnership with the private sector, which enables the industry to commercialise faster than competitors. "When you have the top-down approach, you can often bring your products to the market faster, because you have that coordination of the government driving you to go to market. "So the government understands what you need in order to make this business work. But also the government is able to relate to you what parameters you're going to have to operate in, so businesses can quite quickly understand the product and service they're going to be able to offer in that regard," he said. "With these advantages, China is really going to be able to position itself as a first-mover in this industry and a model for other cities of how they can develop this urban air mobility, and to have more cities to really launch their aerial vehicles into their business markets as well."
Scientific American
02-06-2025
- Health
- Scientific American
Engineered Viruses Make Neurons Glow and Treat Brain Disease
The brain is like an ecosystem—thousands of different types of cells connect to form one big, interdependent web. And just as biologists document species of plants and animals, neuroscientists have spent decades identifying different 'species' of neurons and other brain cells that support them. They've found more than 3,000 cell types spread throughout the brain, including chandelier neurons surrounded by branching arms, pyramidal neurons with far-reaching nerve fibers and star-shaped astrocytes that help neurons form new connections with one another. This newfound diversity is not only a beautiful picture for neuroscientists—it's also key to understanding how the brain works and what goes wrong in certain brain diseases. From Parkinson's disease to schizophrenia, many brain disorders stem from specific types of brain cells. 'As long as I've been doing neuroscience, it's been a goal of researchers to have brain-cell-type-targeting tools,' says Jonathan Ting of the Allen Institute, a nonprofit research center in Seattle. Now they have them in spades. In a fleet of eight studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and published last week, scientists from 29 research institutions found and tested more than 1,000 new ways to home in on specific cell types, no matter where they are in the brain. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The technique behind these tools uses non-disease-causing viruses (called adeno-associated viruses, or AAVs) to deliver genes directly to specific neurons. This can make the cells do almost anything. Scientists can turn them off, activate them, 'light them up like a Christmas tree' with glowing proteins or deliver gene therapies right to them, says Ting, senior author of one of the new studies. The researchers have tested the technique only in nonhuman animals, but the bulk of the tools work across mammal species and would likely work in humans, too. Similar, less-targeted AAV gene therapies are already approved for treating spinal muscular atrophy and are being tested in clinical trials for Huntington's disease. 'There are a lot of good examples' of how AAVs are being used to treat brain disease, says Nikolaus McFarland, a neurologist at the University of Florida, who treats neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Huntington's. 'It's really exciting stuff.' Viral Shuttles Every type of brain cell is like a unique creature. Scientists have categorized the cells based on their shape, location and electrical properties—and, more generally, based on the genes they express most out of an organism's full library of DNA. By expressing certain genes, these cells carry out specific actions, such as building specialized proteins. If researchers can identify a unique snippet of genetic code that is activated just in those cells, they can use that snippet to target them. Next, they attach this genetic snippet, called an enhancer, to an AAV that has been gutted of its viral DNA. They can fill the viral husk with specific genes to deliver to those cells. The now-filled husks enter the bloodstream like a fleet of delivery shuttles, bypassing the blood-brain barrier, but are only able to activate their genetic cargo in cells with the enhancer. In the new studies, researchers focused on cell types in three parts of the brain: the outer layer of brain tissue called the cortex that plays a role in higher-level thinking, the striatum, which is part of the basal ganglia (a stretch of deep brain tissue) that is impacted in Huntington's and Parkinson's disease, and the spinal cord, whose motor neurons are destroyed in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The consortium of 247 scientists was funded by the NIH's Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative as a part of a larger research project called the Armamentarium for Precision Brain Cell Access. The scientists found and tested more than 1,000 enhancer AAVs, now freely available to researchers, that target specific cell types in those key brain regions. Tweaking the Brain Previously, these enhancer AAVs had been developed in a slow trickle by different labs, but 'now we have thousands of tools' to tweak specific cell types, says Bosiljka Tasic, director of molecular genetics at the Allen Institute and senior author of one of the new studies. Researchers can load these AAV shuttles with all sorts of different genes to answer different questions. In some cases, even just seeing the neurons in action is cause for celebration: 'Some of them are very rare cells that you wouldn't find randomly by poking around in brain tissue,' Ting says. To observe them, researchers can introduce a gene that makes a glowing protein that lights up elusive neurons from the inside to reveal their structure and how they connect with other brain cells. Researchers can also control how certain brain cells fire and turn their activity up or down to see how the change impacts an animal's behavior. To do this, researchers insert a gene into the target cells that creates a light-sensitive protein called an opsin; then they can shine specific wavelengths of light on the brain to make those cells fire on command. Ting's team used this technique, called optogenetics, to stimulate certain cells in the striatum of mice. When the researchers stimulated those cells on just one side of the brain, the mice began moving more on one side of their body than the other, causing them to go in circles. These interventions are reversible and repeatable. 'That's the part that's really satisfying for neuroscientists,' Ting says. 'You can turn them off, turn them back on and then see how that affects the brain circuit.' It's ' so much better and also so much more informative' than destroying whole parts of a mouse brain to see what happens, as is the case with much neuroscience research from the past century, Tasic says. 'That brain region may have a hundred different cell types,' so being able to activate and inactivate them more precisely will reveal more information about how these circuits work, she says. New Treatments So far, the new enhancer AAVs have been tested in mice, rats and macaques. 'We keep trying more and more species,' Ting says. 'We haven't even figured out what's the limit.' And that brings us to humans. 'That's really the answer to the question 'Why do we care?'' he says. 'We have built strong evidence that some of these tools—maybe not all of them, but many of them—may work across species into humans and could represent the start of a new therapeutic vector development that could be used to more finely treat debilitating brain disorders.' For these treatments, enhancer AAVs could deliver gene therapy right to the brain cells that need it. The best candidates for this technique are neurodegenerative diseases, such as ALS, Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. Researchers are currently working on AAV gene therapies for these conditions and others that target whole regions of the brain rather than specific types of brain cells. Trials of these therapies indicate that they are largely safe. 'We now have lots of good examples of AAV being used,' McFarland says. 'We have [a] good safety record for that.' 'There's a lot that we still don't understand about neurodegenerative diseases,' he adds, and these little viral shuttles will allow scientists to make those discoveries that enable new treatments. While each of these brain disorders is unique, cracking one of them might help scientists crack the others, too, McFarland says: 'I wholeheartedly believe that.'
