The pilotless air taxi is going international, and its next stop is Hanoi.

EHang announced on September 29 that Vietnam has become the second country to join its Global Fast Track Program, after Sri Lanka, with Hanoi as the first city-level partnership. The company’s local partner, HungViet, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Hanoi Department of Science and Technology to run low-altitude sandbox testing of EHang’s EH216-S, the two-seat pilotless electric aircraft that already carries passengers commercially in China.

This is how air taxis actually spread around the world. Not with a single global launch, but city by city, sandbox by sandbox, regulator by regulator.

## A sandbox at Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park

The plan is phased and deliberate. Under Hanoi’s dedicated procedures for regulatory sandbox testing, the partners will start preparing application materials this month, then move to controlled test flights of the EH216-S once approvals land. The work centers on Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park, where they’ll build an unmanned aircraft traffic management model and an operations control center model alongside the flight testing.

EHang supplies the aircraft, the operational technology, and the training. HungViet, as the local implementing entity, commits the technical, financial, and human resources. Hanoi’s science and technology department guides the approval process. Everyone has a defined job, which is more than you can say for most air taxi announcements.

The testing will cover both the human-carrying and cargo-carrying variants of the EH216 series, verified against Vietnam’s local regulations, real operating environments, and actual business conditions. Truong Viet Dzung, vice chairman of the Hanoi People’s Committee, framed it as urban development: Hanoi is growing fast, and pilotless aircraft could open new possibilities for both mobility and cultural tourism.

That tourism angle is doing real work here. Vietnam received nearly 21.2 million international visitors in 2025, an all-time record. Aerial sightseeing over Ha Long Bay or along the coast is the kind of use case that can make money long before daily commuting by air taxi makes sense. EHang plans to expand beyond Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang, building diversified commercial scenarios around urban commuting and tourist destinations.

## The playbook is proven

What makes this announcement land differently from most eVTOL press releases is the hardware’s resume. The EH216-S holds the world’s first type certificate, production certificate, and standard airworthiness certificate for a pilotless passenger-carrying eVTOL, all issued by China’s civil aviation authority. It already operates under China’s first batch of commercial operation qualifications for pilotless passenger aircraft. This isn’t a prototype looking for a purpose. It’s a certified aircraft looking for new markets.

EHang’s longer-range VT35 extends the same playbook to inter-city routes, giving the company a two-tier story: short hops within cities, longer legs between them.

The Hanoi signing also came with a diplomatic backdrop. On the sidelines of the 61st Conference of Directors General of Civil Aviation for Asia and Pacific, EHang held talks with aviation officials from Malaysia, Laos, Fiji, Cambodia, the Philippines, Tonga, Maldives, Bhutan, and Nepal about bringing the same sandbox model to their countries. Vietnam is the proof of concept. The region is the pipeline.

## Why the sandbox model works

There’s a reason EHang keeps winning these partnerships. Most eVTOL companies arrive in a new country with a prototype and a presentation. EHang arrives with an aircraft that already holds a type certificate, a production certificate, and an airworthiness certificate, plus real commercial operating qualifications at home. For a regulator, that’s the difference between evaluating a promise and evaluating a product.

The sandbox structure helps too. Instead of asking Hanoi to write permanent rules for an unfamiliar aircraft, the MOU creates a controlled space to learn: test flights first, then traffic management models, then technical standards, then commercial operations. Each phase generates the evidence the next one needs. It’s slower than a ribbon-cutting, and far more likely to end with passengers in seats.

## What it means

For travelers, the timeline is measured but real. Sandbox testing first, then phased commercial work. If you’ve ever sat in Hanoi traffic, the appeal of a 15-minute electric hop across the city needs no explanation. Tourists may well be the first passengers, on sightseeing routes where the economics already work.

For cities, Hanoi is writing the template other Southeast Asian capitals will copy. The sandbox approach lets regulators learn alongside operators instead of guessing at rules for aircraft they’ve never seen. Expect more MOUs in the region within the year.

For investors, the Fast Track Program is EHang’s answer to the hardest question in the eVTOL business: how do you scale a certified aircraft across dozens of different regulatory regimes? The answer, it turns out, is one memorandum at a time. Vietnam is number two. The waiting list is long.

For more on the air taxi race, see our [Breaking News coverage](https://newstodayworld.org/category/breaking-news/), including [Joby’s 3,100-mile autonomous cross-country flight](https://newstodayworld.org/breaking-news/2026/09/30/joby-logs-3100-mile-autonomous-cross-country-flight/) and [Nimbus’s quarter-scale hybrid-electric prototype flights](https://newstodayworld.org/breaking-news/2026/09/30/nimbus-flies-quarter-scale-hybrid-electric-plane-prototype/).