Still the stuff of concepts and flights of fancy in the West, automakers on the other side of the world are putting copters in their cars.
CHINESE AUTOMAKERS ARE starting to equip electric cars with camera drones. For now, this drone integration is aimed at content creators who want to collect videos of themselves driving. These systems typically enable one-click filming of a moving vehicle, with the action viewable live on the car’s interior display as well as recorded for posterity. The flights can also be voice-controlled by the (distracted) driver.
The $150,000 Yangwang U8 plug-in hybrid SUV from BYD, the world’s largest maker of electric vehicles, sports a DJI drone stored and charged in a dedicated roof space capped with a Thunderbirds-style slide-away panel.
Geely-owned Lynk & Co has updated the operating system on its $24,000 06 EM-P compact SUV so that its cockpit screen can control a hood-launched drone, again from DJI.
The $98,000 M-Hero 917 SUV from the state-owned Dongfeng can be equipped—for an extra $14,000—with the commercial S400 drone from GDU Tech. (Both DJI and GDU Tech are Shenzhen-based.) Launched from the 917’s roof for autonomous flight or controllable by touchscreen from within this Hummer-shaped off-roader, the S400’s camera array has motion detection and face recognition for creepy but precise target tracking.
Read more: Wired
