In the bleak desert east of the ocean and west of the mountains, a robot will open up, take a human into its body cavern, and then lift off into the sky. No more than 23 minutes later, the robot will land, and disgorge its human contents. The Ehang 184 is confusingly termed a "passenger drone," and the remotely piloted people-carrying device is now cleared to test in Nevada.

The drone will test under the supervision of the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems, and the Ehang 184 joins the growing tech boom in Nevada. The empty desert holds the hope of hyperloops, drone delivery, autonomous trucking, and drone airports. (Nevada is also famously the home of secret military aircraft testing, and there's a distant possibility that the Ehang could be adopted into military use.)

While the market for, say, self-driving trucks or drone deliveries is pretty self-explanatory, who wants a helicopter that can't fly for even a full half hour? The Guardian writes: