Passenger drones will start flying for real in summer 2017
If you make it to Dubai this summer, you might have the chance to catch a brand new type of self-driving vehicle. One that flies.
At today's World Government Summit, the head of the city's Roads & Transportation Agency, Mattar al-Tayer, announced plans to introduce a passenger-carrying drone service. The one-person drones could be ferrying commuters between predetermined checkpoints by July; the agency showed off the vehicle at an event, according to an AP report.
"This is not only a model," al-Tayer said. "We have actually experimented with this vehicle flying in Dubai's skies."
The drone itself is the EHang 184, a Chinese-made all-electric drone that first debuted at CES 2016 and has also conducted flight tests in Las Vegas last summer. It's a 500-pound personal aircraft, with room for one passenger weighing up to 100 kilograms (220 pounds) and a small suitcase in a separate compartment.
The EHang 184 can fly about 50 kilometers (31 miles) on a single charge, hitting top speeds of up to 160 kph (100 mph).
For the proposed Dubai taxi service, the drones would be piloted and monitored from a "remote command center." The service could offer flights within an area of 40-50 kilometers, with a typical cruising speed of around 100 km/h (62 mph).
Beyond the promo video and a Roads & Transportation Agency statement obtained by the AP, which said the craft "had been examined by the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and was controlled through 4G mobile internet," details on the plan are scarce. We reached out to EHang reps for comment, and will update this story upon receiving a response.
EHang isn't the only name in the "flying car" game, but it looks to be the furthest along. Airbus is also looking to have a passenger drone in the air by the end of the year — but that craft isn't even projected to be ready for a manned demo like EHang's until at least 2020. Uber has posted a conceptual white paper and hired a former NASA engineer to head up its efforts, while Google co-founder Larry Page is rumored to be experimenting with some kind of super-secret design through his startup Zee.Aero.
Brett Williams is a Tech Reporter at Mashable. He writes about tech news, trends and other tangentially related topics with a particular interest in wearables and exercise tech. Prior to Mashable, he wrote for Inked Magazine and Thrillist. Brett's work has also appeared on Fusion and AskMen, to name a few. You can follow Brett on Twitter @bdwilliams910.
