When I browse Alibaba for all kinds of fun and interesting electric cars, I often stumble upon strange-looking products that often have a real use case behind them. The best of these make it into our recurring Awesome Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column, and that’s exactly where this man-carrying drone lands today.
To be fair, I’m not sure the main purpose of this flying electric car is to transport people.
They advertise it with a few pictures of a person hanging underneath to show the carrying capacity of the drone. It seems that at least one of the photos is not actually entertaining, as the man appears to be arriving at the communications tower platform.
I think for those who don’t want to spend half an hour climbing a ladder to change a light bulb or switch a connector, a drone could be a shortcut to some of these hard-to-reach areas. It could also open up the pool of workers for this job not just to people with Popeye’s forearms.
But manned work doesn’t appear to be the main use case for a heavy drone like this.
Instead, it seems to me that it is primarily a work drone designed for utility missions where you want to lift a significant amount of weight in tools or supplies.
The stated weight-carrying capacity of 200 kg (440 lbs) is very impressive, especially since the unit weighs only 40 kg (88 lbs) on its own. But you’ll need the extra lift capability for a number of other advertised uses, such as a water sprayer for cleanup missions or a heavy-duty drone for transporting supplies in mountainous or inaccessible areas.
Apparently some companies use it to clean wind turbine blades.
Interestingly, the drone can run off the 16 onboard batteries or can be attached to an electrical cable for continuous flight. For long-term tasks like washing windows, this is probably the best way to do it.
The batteries provide only 20 minutes of flight time, and replacing 16 batteries with freshly charged units will likely take another 20 minutes on the ground. This limited battery flight time also means that if you’re going to use it to transport workers to aerial platforms, it’s best not to take the scenic route.
The drone comes with three parachutes that can automatically deploy if it goes into free fall, which makes me feel just a little better about holding on to the rope ladder and going for a ride.
The manufacturer also advertises that the controls can be operated tethered, so you don’t have to use radio frequencies in areas that might be subject to interference. This makes me a little concerned about what other uses they envision for a heavy drone like this, but I’ll leave that for another day.
With an advertised price of US$5,000, it also seems oddly affordable. I have no idea what the going rate for a drone is these days, but I probably would have guessed more. You can barely buy an electric motorcycle for that amount, and these only move in one plane.
Of course, the catch is that you have to buy two of them, because this is the minimum order quantity from the seller. So, if you’re crazy enough to commit to one of these things, you might as well find a friend who’s equally crazy for the second.
If it’s not clear yet, please do not try to purchase one of these products from Alibaba. This column is a satirical exercise in exploring just how cool and exciting the world’s largest electric vehicle provider’s catalog of exotic vehicles is. But I certainly wouldn’t encourage anyone to go through the financial and emotional challenge of trying to buy something expensive on Alibaba. I’ve been there, done that, and this is not for the timid.
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