Ehang Air Taxi design

I was reading about Ehand latest demonstration flights in Vienna and noticed they changed the design of the air taxi.

The previous design has 4 booms with coaxial design:

Source: Ehang

Source: Ehang

The latest design Ehang 216 has 8 booms with coaxial design:

source: CNBC

source: CNBC

It is very weird that Ehang design the air taxi such that the passenger cabin is above the propeller instead of underneath it like an helicopter. This forces passenger to walk close to the exposed propellers every time they want to get on and off the taxi. This by itself may not pose any safety concerns since the design can be such that the power to the motors will only be turned on when the passengers are in the cabin. However, psychologically it adds additional stress to passengers which seems unnecessary and hard to overcome.

In a survey conducted by Deliotte https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/future-of-mobility/psychological-barriers-to-elevated-mobility-autonomous-aerial-vehicles.html

about half of the survey respondents are unconvinced that air taxis will be safe

deliotte.PNG

Perhaps consumer psychology can be taken into account when designing air taxis and perhaps it will be well worth it to trade off some flying efficiency .