Autel Announces Delay In Production Of EVO 2

Ansia · Feb 1, 2020

Or make them infrared sensors, which will allow them to see at night.

Pman · Feb 2, 2020

DJI may release a competitor to the Evo 2 but you can be assured that it will cost a lot more. I dont believe for a moment that they wont market the heck out of it as the premium product regardless of its specs.
Are they going to do a hot swappable camera system remains to be seen. They could have done it with the Mavic 2 but there was so much $ to be made by not doing it. The importance of the Evo 2 and Skydio 2 releasing close to each other with new tech cannot be made light of. The balls in DJI's court now. How long before they respond and what they respond with is the elephant in the room.
As mentioned in the Evo 2 discussion thread I personally DON'T believe Autel is being as transparent as they want us all to believe. It's a huge mistake on their part IF they have the fix and dont push them out the door instead of waiting til at least March to release large batches. You need to get them into people's hands now to keep the excitement up or orders will be cancelled and people will wait to see what DJI offers. This is why I DON'T believe them when they allude to the problem just needing a firmware update.
I hope I'm wrong about this but what is your heart/gut telling you.....

I AM rooting for you Autel! I'm also begging you to set yourself apart from shenanigans.

Jagerbomb52 · Feb 2, 2020

Watching what DJI has had to offer in the last 6 months I do not believe they are very interested in prosumer drones as much as they used to be. Sending toy robots out the doors, The DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 being reinstated for sale and confirmation that the DJI Matrice 300 release is planned for the end of February. And only rumors of DJI Mavic 3 around summertime, and the DJI Mavic Air 2 as soon as April. I kind of get the impression they are going more to the commercial side of things. They also have a lot of trouble States side with the US government flicking them the middle finger with grounding all the DJI drones they own. Not saying they will not produce something in the next little while but things are tough for them right now.

Pman · Feb 2, 2020

While I generally agree i dont think DJI is going to give away their pro-sumer business without a big fight. They have huge numbers of US consumers to fight for them and i would be stunned if their drones are not going to suddenly turn into bricks. $400 - $2000 drones sold like hotcakes adds up quick. Would like to know the actual % of their business in each division.

KunBow · Feb 4, 2020

macoman said:
I know they said flight performance issues but also saw some reports online that some Evo 2 will fly away and never come back. Not sure if this could also be considered an issue.

Sounds like a repeat of the orange bird. I had that happen to me!

loyukfai · Feb 4, 2020

KunBow said:
Sounds like a repeat of the orange bird. I had that happen to me!

Birds seek for freedom just like human do lol.

xspwhite · Feb 4, 2020

KunBow said:
Sounds like a repeat of the orange bird. I had that happen to me!

Was it the one on your lap? Those old X-Stars did not like being cuddled.?

claudius62 · Feb 4, 2020

There is also, perhaps, what I do not hope, the way the FAA will treat drones by trying to nail them to the ground. And also the blocking of imports of devices from Asia which concerns DJI but which will impact other players like Yuneec, Autel etc ...
Altar, its main trade is the USA, it does not import in Europe, therefore a blocking or a brake on the importation of its products will amount to a huge loss in turnover. So no turnover, no manufacturing.
I believe that like Yuneec, it is waiting to know what will be the situation in the coming months with the FAA and imports.
Personally, I would not make a product if I did not have the margin to make the business profitable.
Maybe I'm wrong, what I want because the Evo 2 has real potential.
So let's wait ...

Pman · Feb 4, 2020

Suggested watch is Ken Heron #131 with Xjet Bruce Simpson or just Xjet Bruce Simpson cut that's about 33 minutes. His comments about the FAA.

Has everyone in the US received a notice from the FAA asking for input? I got one the other day. Still formulating what I want to say. Xjet made some great points about the safety of drones.
Looks like Xjet has a second FAA vid too. Really great stuff investigating the fluff and nonsense in this proposal.

Jagerbomb52 · Feb 4, 2020

I noticed Autel gave Matti Haapoja a EVO 2 for review later on in one of his blogs on youtube. Hopefully he does a better job then he did for the EVO 1 when they gave him one to review. He is a big DJI fanboy and knows very little about drones in general but should be interesting if he gets into how well the 8K video is as he does know his stuff when it comes to that end of the review. Here he is bragging he bought a Tesla, guess Youtube pays pretty well.

Pman · Feb 4, 2020

Matti, that is NOT the way to "act" humble. Nuff said on that.

Thanks for the link as it will still be interesting to hear what he has to say about the drones footage.
Always need to remind ourselves to get a bit of background on reviewers before putting faith in "their" opinions. It's hard to get complete honesty when they have already picked a side or at least invested a lot in a particular brand. Once someone starts getting paid ($ or free stuff) all bets are off. It is VERY difficult for even the most honest to remain unbiased.

PoorMoney · Feb 4, 2020

YouTube is filled with FAKE NEWS and FAKE PEOPLE.

Jagerbomb52 · Feb 5, 2020

PoorMoney said:
YouTube is filled with FAKE NEWS and FAKE PEOPLE.

Matti is not one of them.

JohnOfDrones · Feb 6, 2020

Ansia said:
According to the specifications posted by Autel, they do not.

The advantage to the 8K is not only the full screen video field (although impressive) but the oversampling potential that the larger imagining field will give the 4K recording field twice the dynamic resolution. Also, I anticipate that 8K still imagining combined with the mission planning features will make EVO II a prosumer mapping/survey/3D modeler right out of the box.

Ansia · Feb 6, 2020

JohnOfDrones said:
The advantage to the 8K is not only the full screen video field (although impressive) but the oversampling potential that the larger imagining field will give the 4K recording field twice the dynamic resolution. Also, I anticipate that 8K still imagining combined with the mission planning features will make EVO II a prosumer mapping/survey/3D modeler right out of the box.

Actually, the 6K camera is better for mapping. It has the 1" sensor and adjustable aperture.

JohnOfDrones · Feb 6, 2020

Ansia said:
Actually, the 6K camera is better for mapping. It has the 1" sensor and adjustable aperture.

Better, sure. But still more than adequate and no need for 3rd party app. And once the 6K gimbal is available, you can add it to your kit.

RobyRoad · Feb 13, 2020

JohnOfDrones said:
Better, sure. But still more than adequate and no need for 3rd party app. And once the 6K gimbal is available, you can add it to your kit.

Is there going to be any 3rd party software support for mapping with the Evo2? Autel had a great promo video for the mapping capabilities of the Evo 1, but it took forever to come out and is still nowhere near what the 3rd party apps for DJI will do. Besides my Evo, I have a Phantom 3 Pro and a 3DR Solo, and the mapping and autonomous capabilities of both those 2015-era drones blow away what my Evo can do in 2020.

I use my Evo for most of my manual flying jobs, but for any mapping or autonomous routing, I use one of the others. Lack of 3rd party support has been the most disappointing aspect of the Evo.

Maybe the Evo 2 will be successful enough that the software companies will work on it. I don't think I'll buy one unless I see that happen. It's a real shame, because I love everything else about the Evo 2 so far.

JohnOfDrones · Feb 13, 2020

RobyRoad said:
Is there going to be any 3rd party software support for mapping with the Evo2? Autel had a great promo video for the mapping capabilities of the Evo 1, but it took forever to come out and is still nowhere near what the 3rd party apps for DJI will do. Besides my Evo, I have a Phantom 3 Pro and a 3DR Solo, and the mapping and autonomous capabilities of both those 2015-era drones blow away what my Evo can do in 2020.

I use my Evo for most of my manual flying jobs, but for any mapping or autonomous routing, I use one of the others. Lack of 3rd party support has been the most disappointing aspect of the Evo.

Maybe the Evo 2 will be successful enough that the software companies will work on it. I don't think I'll buy one unless I see that happen. It's a real shame, because I love everything else about the Evo 2 so far.

Thanks for correcting my misapprehension. Just speculating in advance without and first-hand knowledge. I guess I'm just anxious to join the discussion while awaiting word of the EVO 2 release.

RobyRoad · Feb 13, 2020

JohnOfDrones said:
Thanks for correcting my misapprehension. Just speculating in advance without and first-hand knowledge. I guess I'm just anxious to join the discussion while awaiting word of the EVO 2 release.

Sorry, not trying to correct anything. I'm in the same spot as you, wishing and hoping for what it could be. The Evo 2 seems like evrything I want in my next drone. It seems like Autel's track record so far is to promise greatness and a lot of things, deliver partially, and then launch a new product that promises the rest of what the old product was supposed to do.

I've been really impressed with what I've been able to get out of my Evo's camera, especially with nd's. The autonomous stuff is soooooo close, but I just wish they could finish it, instead of jumping to the next thing. My only beef with the actual hardware is the gimbal tilt control, which is way too jerky, but I don't need to use it that much. If they would just put the work into the software, or convince the 3rd party companies to develop for it, it would be so great. If we could get a Litchi or a DroneDeploy type app to work with it...