Flying Cars for Personal Transportation: George Yan and the EHang 184

Chevy, Ford, Intel, Mercedes-Benz, Netflix, Oculus, Samsung and 1,430 other company displays fill the Center’s 2.3 million-square-foot (213,676.992-square-meter) floor space under mile- (1,609.344-meter-) high fluorescent lights.

EHang, whose main testing facility is in Guangzhou, China, gives the show’s crowds a prototype displayed without battery-operated functionality but with air-conditioned cockpit and four-point harness. Its prototype for flying cars has an equal number of electric motors and of rotor propellers that are distributed evenly over the quadcopter base’s four arms. Pitching each arm’s set of a clockwise-rotating, upper rotor and of a counterclockwise-rotating, lower rotor at an angle that pushes air downward is responsible for lift.

An absence or a proliferation of regulations and a limitation or a void in software and technology sometimes jeopardize inventions between drawing boards and production lines. 

The non-issuance of position papers by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration keeps flying cars from being illegal to drive by implication in the United States.

Experiences with autopilots for airplanes and experiments with robot co-pilots by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) lead researchers to doubt interference from hostile regulation. Mary Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, mentions: “We’re really terrible drivers, and we’re really terrible pilots.” The former F-18 pilot notes: “The sooner we can get to an autonomous flying car, the safer we’ll be on the roads and in the sky.”

Alexander George, article author and associate editor covering technology, observes of Autopilot on typical Boeing 777’s flights: “Sensors and software handle everything down to the landing.” 

George Yan, co-founder and chief operating officer at EHang, possesses software skills from his vice presidency for Microsoft’s cloud storage, server and Windows expansion in China. He questions the sustainable functionality of flying cars without sense and avoid (SAA) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) versions for identifying, navigating and sharing obstacle- and weather-related information. He revels in a future, three or five years away, of user routes mapped at local command-control centers in accordance with battery ranges and route safety. He says that, like many professionals in the personal air vehicle business, “my favorite cartoon was The Jetsons” because of the levitating, mid-century concept car-like vehicle.

Mr. Yan thinks presciently like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on Windows and Apples: “We have a dream of putting a passenger drone on every rooftop.” 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

"How Will the Future Family Live and Dress?" in Vogue's April 2016 issue envisions a "future perfect" that includes EHang184 Autonomous Aerial Vehicle and Faraday Future FFZERO1 concept car in family transport fleet.
image by Mert and Marcus (Mert Alaş and Marcus Piggott): LaunchSquad @LaunchSquad, via Twitter March 24, 2016, @ https://twitter.com/LaunchSquad/status/713064167956058112

In "The Fantastical, Highly Questionable, Totally Exciting Future of the Flying Car" (online March 15, 2016; April 2016 issue), Popular Mechanics senior editor Alexander George dates the magazine's first mention of flying cars to April 1906.
"Flying Auto the Latest Motor Car" (Popular Mechanics, vol. VIII, no. 4, April 1906, p. 416) describes combined aeroplane-automobile designed by M. Vina of Paris.
photo illustration by Zach Bush: Popular Mechanics @PopMech, via Twitter March 15, 2016, @ https://twitter.com/PopMech/status/709831548296699904

George Yan, EHang's co-founder and COO, remembers the levitating, mid-century concept car-like vehicle in his favorite animated sitcom, The Jetsons.
The Jetsons' aerocar had a transparent bubble top.: The Jetsons @TheJetsons, via Facebook April 28, 2014, @ https://www.facebook.com/TheJetsons/posts/626330474111402/

"EHANG 184 Launch Video from CES2016" (4:57)
Uploaded January 6, 2016, by Recode to YouTube ~ URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vGd1Oy7Cw0

EHang 184 is displayed at 48th annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES2016), held in Las Vegas, Nevada, from Wednesday, January 6, to Saturday, January 9, 2016.
EHang 184 series is world's first electric autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV) capable of flying a passenger; Friday, January 8, 2016: ETC-USC, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/92587836@N04/24358360065/

Mary "Missy" Cummings, director of the Human and Automony Lab (HAL) at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, since 2014, favors autonomous flying cars.
She sees greater safety in the air and on the road as a benefit of autonomous flying cars.
Encouragement for STEM Women, via Facebook June 30, 2015, @ https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=850265858373344&id=845738085492788; via Facebook June 30, 2015, @ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=850265858373344&id=845738085492788&set=a.846083788791551

“EHang 184: Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV).” EHang.com.

• Available @ http://www.ehang.com/ehang184

George, Alexander. April 2016. “The Fantastical, Highly Questionable, But Totally Exciting Future of the Flying Car.” Photo Illustration by Zach Bush. Popular Mechanics.

• Available @ http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a19708/future-of-the-flying-car/

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