The Ehang 184 is a short distance low altitude electric passenger quad copter with autopilot! In Dubai the Transit Authority is brining the184 into a commercial application of the most advanced transportation technology!
104.5 FM is a local Christian radio station and the host was talking about the Ehang 184 this morning when I was driving home from my brewing partners house/ brewery. I went over to donate/ loan a high output UV-C lamp for sterilization assistance, having long ago assembled the fixture as a kit with its ballast and purchasing the lamp from Kelsun lighting distributors. It was sitting idle in my closet for a while when Jaeson asked about a UV-C lamp. I was excited to be able to make good use of it in another application!
I learned about the Ehang 184 months ago on YouTube as I tend to watch technology videos. Having recently purchase a Syma X5C drone, I am interesting in drone technology, artificial intelligence, computer science, IOT, wireless networks, information technology, big data, cloud storage, software as a service, car sharing, self driving vehicles, robots, smartphones, cameras, 3D VR, battery energy storage technology, clean technology, renewable energy, energy, physics, chemistry, health, nutrition, biochemistry, agriculture, gardening, soil health, sustainability, culture, sociology, psychology, immunology, stem cell technologies, and a range of other materials science, energy and conceptual innovations that represent the level of riches in modern technologies! Modern Marvels, How Its Made, Engineering Disasters, Fail Videos, etc. I have a infotainment style viewing preference reflected by my general interests!
German Mega Drones
About a year ago I saw a video of some German quad copter designers who built a huge 16 rotor heavy lift electric multirotor drone. I thought it would be cool to build a high output compact "motorcycle" like version, having long ago been inspired by Star Wars' vehicles that look like flying motorcycles. Heavy lift drones exist as a reflection of heavy lift helicopters. Multi-rotors VTOL or vertical take off and landing gives aircraft remarkable application potential. Your should see my cheap X5C toy ($40) fly! The main problem is short battery life! A human has about 16 hours of run time before sleep required on average. Getting any power application lithium ion device to give more than 5 hours of operating duration at high output is a gigantic engineering challenge by comparison. Even as mamals, relative to stronger Apes and Gorilla, humans have remarkable endurance! We also live ~100 years in many cases! That's a lot of heart beats; what an amazing pump!
Skycar Nostalgia
Combining aspects of the Moller Sky Car with the concept of a motorcycle results in a flying passenger quad copter. The electric motors required to lift 200lb of wet human flesh needed to be custom designed as there was nothing commercial available with CW output and low weight of required metric to assemble such a craft. Ehang did the diligent difficult work of custom designing a double fan rotor axial motor setup that has remarkable lift power to weigh ratios rivaling that of turbine engines in jet aircraft.
Limited Range Lithium Ion
Lithium ion batteries are just light enough to mount 30 min of flight duration worth in a small 2 passenger aircraft. Legendary helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky (now part of Lockheed Martin) demonstrated an electric helicopter of this capacity (the firefly) a couple of years ago, having abandoned any efforts to commercialize such a product as it would only be useful as a trainer aircraft for new pilots. Noteworthy in this role because electric is quiet and does not emit noxious of toxic emissions, making it ideal for a student training aircraft that spends most of its short flights near populated areas close to the ground: the application thereof a boon for air quality improvements. That's right, electric vehicles improve the air quality where they are operated! This should come as no surprise as the tailpipe of an EV might be as benign as a wind turbine, solar panel or hydro damn. Even when EV's are charged using power from coal energy, this is still cleaner for local air quality where most people are living and breathing, the coal power plants of today are not only being phased out of operation ever more rapidly every year, where they operate, they often do so quite distant from population centers.
Air Quality
Ehang is developing the 184 in China, where horrific air pollution terrorizes nearly everyone daily with toxic doses of coal power emissions, tail pipe funk, and factor pollutants galore. People that move to the USA from China often note our "Champaign" air quality by comparison to the toxic shithole they moved away from. The Chinese government having long ago prioritized economic development over air quality, public healthy or environmental protection. City commuting in tail pipe vehicles contributes some of the worst pollution to the air in cities as piston engines often take 10 min to achieve full operating temperature of the emission control catalysts. During cold start up engines often run rich fuel mixtures that increase the amount of toxic HC or hydrocarbon fumes. Idling engines are the least clean as the engine is on burning fuel while the vehicles is not moving (negative mpg) while also operating outside of its efficient RPM range (engines are dirty at idle). Most vehicles used in city traffic achieve substantially reduced fuel economy while also emitting significantly more air pollution per minute or relative unit of distance covered. In large cities all around China, tail pipes from cars, motorcycles, boats, aircraft, trains, factories & power plants burning coal ; the all contribute to horrendous local air pollution problems. The Ehang 184 offers its passenger the opportunity to climb up above all this ground level pollution, to hop over traffic and fly directly from their starting spot to their nearby destination. The battery in the Ehang 184 only offers about 20 mi of nautical range per charge, limiting its application to dense cities where the offered range proves useful. For reference I drive about 12 mi one way to work, flying like a bird the route would be about 9mi. I would have to charge the Ehang 184 at work to fly home with a safe amount of remaining charge. The main advantage would be the ability to fly over all the stop & go traffic on I405, bypass all the traffic lights, hop over the local traffic corridor air pollution zones and fly directly to work!
Sole Economy Focus a Failure
China is emblematic of the industrial fallout associated with thoughtless manufacturing focused solely only lowering costs. If money is the only focus, pollution is not the only toxic output. Greed is the result of a sole focus on money, toxic to the mind, body and soul. You cant take it with you when you die, money that is, and no one gets out of here alive. The insanity of greed not only causes air quality problems in china, it also causes ruinous decay within families, between families; green causes social decay, moral decay and ethical decay. The focus on maximizing next quarters earning on wall street perhaps also deeply demonstrative of the toxicity of narrow minded short term thinking dominated by greed, avarice and evil.
Innovation King
Despite all this negativity, the Ehang 184 emerges with innovations galore, those very bit of innovation that drag society slowly forward with progress as entrenched industries drag their feet. Disruptive changes to any sector causing wild economic changes that destabilize the flow of wealth into the hands of the 1% that own "everything" as if anyone could actually own anything : news flash, the matter that makes up the known universe does not belong to anyone and furthermore cannot be bought or sold. At best we can advance technologies, especially energy technology, to make better more intelligent use of the matter we find ourselves made of, and lucky to access too. All of this of course belongs to the super intelligent entity that created existence, namely to God, the highest kind above all other kinds, the omniscient, omnipotent, ever present benevolent loving intelligent super creative amazing God that many people worship with awe and respect.
Faith
Praise be to God, I ask that he blesses Ehang with the 184 Project, that this innovation may spare future generations from the sick externalities of the tail pipe emission realities so emblematic of the era we live in today! I pray that all future generations will be blessed with innovations that excite, clean technologies, solutions and options that exist only as science fiction today. I hope that mankind creates a utopia where all people are working together for the collective benefit of everyone. We are all human, all one people on one planet, in it together here on earth, like it or not. Why do we war against ourselves, mankind exhibiting inhumanity against itself: this is insanity at its core, it is each of too, hypocrite liar fools : no one has all the answers and no one is perfect! We are all but a dim tiny reflection of the God that created us. Each of us so small that we are invisible from space, like little bits of sand on earths surface, each life fragile and temporary! Why not work together for the collective benefit of each other? Because some people are greedy selfish assholes who care only for themselves, and for everyone like that, 100x more must suffer. 1 drop of red paint can foul a bucket of white base, making a pink mixture. 1 evil person can make life worse for everyone, and that is what we find ourselves with today. A handful of super evil jerks hold back the entirety of human civilization from improving faster. We are being hindered by these evil people, to build a utopia then need to be eliminated. Sadly each of us has a thread of darkness called sin! Imperfect we can only function at our peak if we dawn glasses of love, looking upon others with grace and kindness, using our powerful but limited minds to execute super intelligent compassion and understanding. Fools beget foolishness, harming themselves for a lack of knowledge! If more intelligent people were ruling the world would already be flying around in super safe all electric autopilot craft, within a flourishing intergalactic utopia civilization with radical amazing technologies in all sectors for the benefit of all people. If we were working together as one we would already be colonizing the universe at a intergalactic scale. It is our inequities that are holding everyone back from a better reality! Everyone should knell before God, give him Glory, Thanks and Attribution for creating our lives and reality, all the matter and energy. People should be giving God thanks constantly instead of worshiping themselves. The lack of thoughtfulness and respect in the world also emblematic of the sickness that mankind exhibits against itself! Stupidity and ignorance are harmful to everyone, especially the ones who hold these toxic ideas or executed the dramatic lack of intelligence associated with stupidity & ignorance.
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