The world's first eVTOL stock, selling aircraft to townships

Author | Xu Lisi

Editor | Moying

In 2009, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA released a CG animated video about the Puffin eVTOL, and the concept of eVTOL began to truly emerge.

eVTOL is a new type of aircraft powered by electricity that can take off and land vertically. Compared with traditional helicopters, eVTOL is quiet and silent, has low maintenance costs, and is highly safe.

In the video, the aircraft can take off and land in the narrow spaces of the city, fly among the city's high-rise buildings, interweave with the city's buildings, bridges and other infrastructure, and people can use this kind of aircraft to easily cross congested areas and complete their daily commute.

“Low-altitude economy"It sounds very high-end,"hailing an air taxi" travel seems out of reach, but for EHang Intelligent, what they want to do is make "hailing an air taxi" part of the public's daily life, allowing eVTOL to integrate into people's daily commute, logistics transportation, emergency rescue and various other scenarios.

In short, they want to make something like eVTOL become in the future astap watercommon as that, achieving inclusive benefits.

In 2013, EHang Intelligent founderHu Huazhihad the idea of building an aircraft that is safe and different from past traditional flight methods. So, he came to Guangzhou and foundedEHang Intelligent Equipment (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd.。

In 2016, Hu Huazhi brought the world's first unmanned passenger-carrying aircraft——EH184made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, USA, shocking the world and prompting American magazines such as "TIME", "VOGUE", and "Popular Mechanics" to compete in reporting on it.

In 2019, EHang Intelligent was listed on Nasdaq in the United States, becoming the "world's first autonomous passenger-carrying aircraft stock". But at the same time, EHang also faced a choice of development route: whether to "focus on technology" or "focus on airworthiness certification".

In the end, EHang Intelligent chose the latter. The upgraded version of EH184—— EH216-S, also successively obtained the world's first type certificate for a passenger-carrying unmanned aircraft, the world's first standard airworthiness certificate for a passenger-carrying unmanned aircraft, and the world's first production license for a passenger-carrying unmanned aircraft, becoming the world's first to obtain airworthiness "Three Major Certificates" unmanned electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft.

At the end of August this year, EHang released its second-quarter financial report, with second-quarter revenue of 102 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of919%, setting a new historical high. And this growth is closely related to the EH216-S obtaining the "Three Major Certificates" and smoothly entering scaled mass production.

Recently, Science and Technology Innovation Southern came to Guangzhou Huangpu District'sU Valley EHang Intelligent Technology Park, and here found EHang IntelligentVice President He Tianxing. In his account, we gained an in-depth understanding of this "world's first stock of autonomous passenger-carrying aircraft" and its development story over more than ten years, as well as its relentless pursuit of integrating low-altitude flight into the public's daily life.

In 2013, Hu Huazhi began planning to prepare to found an aircraft manufacturing company, thinking of realizing his dream of flying by riding an aircraft he built himself.

Before that, he had an entrepreneurial experience doing command and control systems for large computers, and also successively undertook command and dispatch system projects for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, and the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games.

He studied computer science at Tsinghua University. From his teenage years he began to be exposed to model aviation, passed the relevant licenses for general aviation aircraft, and also founded an aerospace model museum in Beijing with friends.

However, the flying friends and gold-medal coaches around him all unexpectedly had accidents during a certain flight, which greatly moved Hu Huazhi. Tocreate a truly safe, environmentally friendly, and autonomous passenger-carrying aircraft that is different from traditional general aviation in the past, such an idea sprouted in his mind.

He Tianxing introduced that in EHang's early entrepreneurial team, those doinginformatization management and developmentaccounted for the majority. The reason behind this is related to the company founder Hu Huazhi's insistence on starting from making aircraft "safe" first.

"The key to ensuring the safe flight of autonomous passenger-carrying aircraft is to achieve precise and orderly flight assurance." This requires building a safe flight management system. Hu Huazhi leveraged his expertise in computer science and took the lead in the industry in building a complete digital system to complete aircraft safety management, command and dispatch, monitoring and early warning, and other work.

The autonomous passenger-carrying aircraft that Hu Huazhi hopes to build must not only achieve safe flight, but also enable scaled application within cities, solve the traffic problem of urban ground transportation already approaching saturation, expand low-altitude travel, and promote the development and transformation of urban morphology.

In 2014, EHang Intelligent was established in Guangzhou. He Tianxing introduced that at the beginning of its establishment, EHang Intelligent determined three core development directions:

First,New intelligent green low-altitude flight, centering on low-altitude airspace with passenger transportation and logistics transport as core scenarios, to create a brand-new urban air mobility model.

Second,Centering on intelligentization, digitalization, and networking, with our autonomous aircraft as the core, plus a clustered dispatch system, to establish a brand-new integrated ground-air urban three-dimensional transportation system.

Third is wanting tocreate a new social and economic business format. At that time, relatively systematic formulations such as low-altitude economy were still relatively rare, but we believed that such a brand-new mode of transportation would inevitably bring new economic increments, drive social transformation and development, and shape a new human living environment.

At the beginning of its establishment, in addition to making autonomous passenger-carrying aircraft, EHang also developed a certain market in consumer-grade drones.

In May 2014, EHang launched the Ghost drone. Controlled by a mobile phone, it allowed non-professionals to fly it right out of the box, and at the time it achieved a crowdfunding result of 860,000 USD overseas.

Besides selling, the core responsibility of consumer-grade drones is actually to help “verify” the future clustered development of low-altitude mass transportation.

“When we were making consumer-grade drones, we wanted to use them to verify that digital management can be introduced into this kind of scaled, clustered aircraft, and to verify that our command and dispatch platform can manage the safe and orderly flight of large-scale drones and even manned aircraft.” said Hu Huazhi.

In EHang’s exhibition hall, Robot Frontline saw the 2016Popular Mechanicsmagazine cover featuring the EH184.

In January 2016, Hu Huazhi brought the world’s first unmanned manned electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft — the EH184 — to appear at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, USA. At the time it could be said to have shocked the world, and well-known magazines such as the American Time, VOGUE, and Popular Mechanics all introduced the EH184 with extensive coverage.

EH184, “1” indicates it can carry 1 person, “8” indicates it has 8 propellers, and “4” indicates it has 4 arms. This aircraft is very small in size and can take off and land in many places.

Since then, research in the field of urban air mobility represented by eVTOL, along with innovation and visions of application scenarios, began to become a topic sweeping the globe and a blue ocean eagerly pursued by the investment community.

Time came to 2018, and EHang, based on the EH184, upgraded and launched the EH216-S (“2” means it can carry 2 people, “16” means it has 16 rotors). The company also listed on the US Nasdaq in 2019, becoming the world’s first urban air mobility stock, after which EHang began its three-year airworthiness path of creating miracles.

“There is no precedent worldwide for airworthiness certification of unmanned manned aircraft, nor are there standards that can be fully referenced; even the civil aviation authority felt this matter was very challenging,” said Hu Huazhi. “But we ultimately chewed through this tough bone.”

In October 2023, the EH216-S obtained theworld’s firsttype certificate for a manned unmanned aircraft, marking that the EH216-S possesses the safety qualifications to begin manned operations.

In December of the same year, EHang was again awarded the world’s first standard airworthiness certificate for a manned unmanned aircraft. In April 2024, EHang obtained the world’s first production certificate for a manned unmanned aircraft. This means that the EH216-S became the world’s first to obtain “Three Major Certificates" unmanned electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft.

Why must we make unmanned aircraft?

“Most accidents in the aviation field are caused by human factors, so we must first eliminate human interference as much as possible. In a relatively pure environment like low altitude, ‘unmanned’ compared with ‘manned’ will besafer, more efficient, and easier to manage. Each aircraft automatically flies along a fixed route, avoiding the impact of human operational errors, and can greatly reduce the probability of accidents.

In addition, the future development scale of the low-altitude economy may be hundreds of thousands or even millions of units. When millions of aircraft fly in the sky, and they also need to be equipped with millions of pilots, the uncertainty involved is simply too great; unmanned operation is the best management model,” Hu Huazhi explained.

“It isnew quality productive forcea typical representative, and is the key to realizing the scaled value of the low-altitude economy.” When mentioning the characteristics of eVTOL compared with past aircraft, Hu Huazhi summarized.

On the one hand, eVTOL adopts a distributed layout of multiple electric motors and also uses relatively advanced flight control systems and sensor technology, possessing higher safety than previous aircraft.

On the other hand, the characteristics of vertical take-off and landing and small size also make eVTOL take-off and landing points more flexible, allowing it to provide air transportation services to people more efficiently and quickly, and eVTOL also has lower noise and causes less pollution to the environment.

More importantly, eVTOL is electric aviation, which can effectively carry out intelligent, digital, and networked management, thereby achieving scaled operational flight and driving the intelligent and inclusive development of the aviation industry.

It is understood that, to ensure safety, the design of the EH216-S incorporates the “full redundancy” concept from the IT field, and all key flight components adopt full redundancy design, including the flight control system, various sensors, the power system, batteries, etc.

At the same time, through high-speed network connections, the EH216-S can interact in real time with the ground command and dispatch system. The system can remotely conduct real-time data transmission and interaction with the EH216-S, scientifically plan and manage the aircraft, realize cluster management and intelligent dispatch, and in the future can more effectively connect to the management network of smart cities and three-dimensional transportation.

Currently, the EH216-S is the world’s first and alsothe only one to have obtained the three major “passes”: the type certificate, standard airworthiness certificate, and production certificatepassenger-carrying eVTOL.

It is worth noting that at the end of August this year, EHang released its Q2 2024 financial report, with Q2 revenue102 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of919.6%, setting a new historical high. And this growth is closely related to EH216-Scompleting the acquisition of the three airworthiness certificates and smoothly entering scaled mass production.

Not long ago, EHang delivered the first batch of 10 EH216-S unmanned passenger-carrying aircraft to Taiyuan Xishan Ecological Cultural Tourism Investment and Construction Co., Ltd., and completed the first passenger-carrying flight in Taiyuan, Shanxi. Xishan Cultural Tourism has currently ordered a total of 50 EH216-S from EHang, and plans to additionally purchase 450 EH216-S within the next 2 years for low-altitude scenarios such as tourism sightseeing and passenger transportation.

"Most of our buyers are B-end and G-end, but the core is always servingC-end, what we really need to do is provide services to consumers. In the future, many new urban aviation operating companies will emerge, providing low-altitude travel services to the public, and promoting low-altitude flight to become a normalized transportation form like car travel." He Tianxing said.

In addition to the passenger-carrying EH216-S, EHang has also launched the EH216-F for high-rise firefighting and rescue, the EH216-L for logistics delivery, and the VT30 intercity long-range unmanned passenger-carrying aircraft.

▲Used for firefighting and rescueEH216-F and EH216-L used for logistics transportation (Robot Frontier Photography)

The emergence of eVTOL heralds a comprehensive revolution in air commuting, emergency rescue, cargo transportation, and even personal travel modes, and will greatly improve the efficiency of urban transportation. It is an important field in which countries around the world are racing to establish a presence and actively seize the high ground of development.

For EHang, accelerating the promotion ofeVTOL commercial operationsis also continuously speeding up.

In July this year, EHang's wholly-owned subsidiary EHang General Aviation, which specializes in UAM operation services, and its joint venture operating company Heyi Aviation in Hefei respectively submitted applications for the Civil Unmanned Aircraft Operation Certificate (OC) to the Civil Aviation Administration of China, and have been accepted. The document review has been completed, and on-site review work is being carried out.

This is the world's first OC certification project for unmanned passenger-carrying electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft to be accepted and begin formal review, and it also means that the world's first passenger-carrying eVTOL operation standard system is about to be born.

He Tianxing revealed that OC is expected to beby the end of this yearobtained. Having OC means that the operating entity company can carry out commercial passenger-carrying operations of civil unmanned aircraft within the prescribed scope.

"The formal acceptance and commencement of review of the world's first unmanned passenger-carrying aircraft OC certification project is of pioneering significance to the eVTOL industry. This is also urban air mobility officially enteringthe mass consumer stage's final hurdle. We look forward to the world's first unmanned passenger-carrying eVTOL commercial operation standard system and the issuance of OC, so that the low-altitude economy can benefit the public." Hu Huazhi once said in media reports.

He Tianxing introduced that EHang's development plan can be divided into three stages, namely the popular science stage, the popularization stage, and the inclusive-benefit stage.

inIn the popular science stage, EHang conducted a large number of flights around the world, and in scenarios such as urban fixed-route transportation, urban sightseeing, and aerial tours, opened flight experience quotas to the public, allowing the public to know and understand unmanned aerial vehicles and ride with peace of mind, comfort, and confidence.

"After obtaining the OC certificate, we will enterPopularization stage. Now EHang has already established dozens of operating points across the country. With the subsequent issuance of OC at each operating point, we will open a large number of low-altitude flight routes, and commercial operations will begin to launch successively across the country." said Hu Tianxing.

And inInclusive stage, with the completion of the construction of a large number of EHang operating points and the improvement of supporting infrastructure in various urban areas, and the application of the low-altitude digital flight management platform, a brand-new, three-dimensional urban air transportation network will take shape. At this time, the public can conveniently "hail an air taxi" just like hailing a taxi, easily achieving daily commuting between cities or within cities, and this stage will also be the period when the low-altitude economy moves toward a trillion-yuan market value scale.

It is understood that in addition to EHang General Aviation and Heyiran Aviation, EHang's partners in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Taiyuan, Wuxi, Wencheng and other cities are also preparing in sync, actively advancing OC certification applications, and accelerating the construction of EH216-S low-altitude economy commercial operation demonstration models locally.

Hu Tianxing also mentioned that EHang has always been vigorously promoting cooperation with related fields, fromproduction and manufacturing, scenario applications to commercial operationsand other links, continuously extending the reach and services of the low-altitude economy to more fields.

Previously, EHang reached cooperation with Juwan Technology Research, incubated by GAC Group, to jointly develop the world's first VTOL aircraft ultra-fast/extremely-fast charging battery, and the two parties will also cooperate in the construction of infrastructure such as ultra-fast charging piles and ultra-fast charging stations.

EHang also cooperates with China Southern Airlines General Aviation in flight operations, comprehensive support and other aspects, and plans to establish EH216-S low-altitude sightseeing operation demonstration points in scenic areas such as Zhuhai Jiuzhou Airport and Chimelong Ocean Kingdom.

At this year's Guangdong Province Low-Altitude Economy High-Quality Development Conference in July, EHang and GAC Group signed a strategic cooperation agreement to discuss establishing a joint venture company to jointly realize the production and promotion of unmanned passenger-carrying aircraft products.

This year, without a doubt, can be said to be "first year of the low-altitude economy". But for EHang, it is the first year of "low-altitude economy commercialization".

"Low-altitude economy" was written into the government work report for the first time at this year's National Two Sessions in March, and immediately afterward, multiple national ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Implementation Plan for Innovative Applications of General Aviation Equipment (2024-2030)", clearly proposing that by 2030, the low-altitude economy will reach a trillion-yuan-level market scale.

Various regions are also actively competing for this trillion-yuan track. About 30 provinces and cities have written the low-altitude economy into their local government work reports. Guangdong and Beijing took the lead in issuing their respective "Low-Altitude Economy High-Quality Development Action Plans", followed by Shanghai's "Shanghai Low-Altitude Economy Industry High-Quality Development Action Plan (2024-2027)", and Shenzhen even positioned itself as a "City of Low-Altitude Economy", continuously issuing a series of policy guidelines from the city to the district level.

A brand-new economic growth pole is about to emerge. Among these, eVTOL is the core track, and also a sign of the maturity and expansion of the low-altitude economy field. In 2023, China's eVTOL industry scale reached 980 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 77.3%.

"In the process of promoting social and economic development, passenger transportation and logistics transport are two huge growth engines, and this is also the core direction of low-altitude economy, especially eVTOL development and application. As the saying goes, 'to get rich, first build roads', eVTOL is not only this 'road', but also the pioneer opening the way for the industrialized development of this industry." said Hu Tianxing.

In his vision, after the low-altitude economy becomes normalized, people will ride eVTOL just like hailing a taxi on the ground, and eVTOL will graduallybe on par with or even surpass the traditional aviation industryAnd the huge market potential and consumption scenarios contained in China make Hu Tianxing believe that China will become the largest market in the global eVTOL industry.

"eVTOL can effectively solve the problem of domestic traffic congestion and meet people's demand for efficient travel. It has broad application prospects in low-altitude tourism, daily commuting and other fields. It can also play a role in logistics transport, emergency rescue, aviation medical care, power inspection, police aviation and many other fields. These diversified application scenarios all provide broad space for the development of eVTOL." said Hu Tianxing.

The low-altitude economy is getting closer and closer to people's lives.

Hu Tianxing mentioned that a while ago EHang delivered dozens of EH216-S aircraft to Wencheng County, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, to carry out low-altitude sightseeing and urban air transportation.

"The development of county-level low-altitude economy determines the market scale and inclusiveness of the future low-altitude economy. The low-altitude economy will also continue to sink downward, penetrate into more regions, and radiate to all levels of society. It will become liketap waterthe same, completely integrated into our daily lives, flying into ordinary people's homes." he said.