Autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV) company EHang has selected Guangzhou, China as its first urban air mobility (UAM) pilot city in the world to establish a low-altitude aviation transportation network that shuttles passengers and goods in a “safe, fast, environmentally friendly, cost-efficient and intelligent way.”

Through the pilot program, EHang will help the Guangzhou government establish a command-and-control center to make sure that multiple AAVs flying at the same time in the city can remain in the air in a “safe and efficient manner,” and can respond to emergencies quickly.

EHang also plans on helping the city build up the basic infrastructure to support urban air mobility, which will include designing safety rules and market entry thresholds.

Regarding passenger transportation, EHang will use this pilot program to test more flight routes and vertiports based on “practical application scenarios,” before it moves into commercial operations.

EHang says that it plans to work with more partners to expand the operations to cover more areas in Guangzhou, and transport a broader variety of high-value low-weight goods, including blood and organs for emergency medical use.

“We are very excited about exploring the various meaningful ways in which AAVs can solve some of the stressors our congested cities face,” says Hu Huazhi, EHang’s founder, chairman and CEO.

“We are in conversations with other cities, not just in China, to develop safe, efficient and affordable autonomous air transportation.”

Over the last two years, EHang has conducted commercial operations in air cargo transportation in and near its home base in Guangzhou in collaboration with express delivery company DHL-Sinotrans and retail company Yonghui.

EHang says that the pilot program in Guangzhou builds off of its successful achievement of several milestones in the UAM space since the introduction of its passenger-grade AAV at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

In January 2019, the Civil Aviation Administration of China selected EHang as the country’s first and only pilot company for passenger AAV development. A few months later in April, the company’s AAV took its first global public pre-programmed flights in Vienna, carrying a total of 17 passengers in successive flights.

Thus far, EHang has safely conducted more than two thousand flight tests both inside and outside of China to make sure that its vehicles can operate safely, even in harsh weather environments.

“Safety has been the top priority for EHang from day one,” Hu says.