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Aeroports de Catalunya and EHang to collaborate on establishing new urban air mobility platform in Europe

EHang has announced a strate­gic part­ner­ship agree­ment with Aero­ports de Catalun­ya, with both par­ties look­ing to devel­op a test base and show­room at Lle­dia-Alguaire Air­port in Spain.

This will include test stud­ies relat­ed to autonomous flight tech­nolo­gies and air­space man­age­ment, help­ing to trans­port the air­port into ‘an inno­v­a­tive plat­form’ for urban air mobil­i­ty in Europe. They will also col­lab­o­rate on pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion, aer­i­al logis­tics, take-off and land­ing infra­struc­ture, air­space man­age­ment and reg­u­la­to­ry cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Vic­to­ria Xiang, CEO of EHang Spain & Latin Amer­i­ca, said: “The Llei­da-Alguaire Air­port is a good plat­form for inno­va­tion under the man­age­ment of Gen­er­al­i­tat de Catalun­ya. The part­ner­ship allows EHang to devel­op, test and demon­strate its autonomous aer­i­al vehi­cles and sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture in an air­port envi­ron­ment, which will great­ly pro­mote UAM and cre­ate a more inte­grat­ed and sus­tain­able air space.”

Aero­ports de Catalun­ya is a pub­lic com­pa­ny of the Gen­er­al­i­tat de Catalun­ya, assigned to the Depar­ta­ment de Ter­ri­tori i Sosteni­bil­i­tat, whose main task is to man­age air­ports, aero­dromes, and heli­pads of the Gen­er­al­i­tat de Catalun­ya. In addi­tion, its cor­po­rate pur­pos­es include the research and devel­op­ment in air trans­port and space.

Through the part­ner­ship with Aero­ports de Catalun­ya, EHang will explore the appli­ca­tion of AAV under the air­port envi­ron­ment and fur­ther advo­cate safe, autonomous and eco-friend­ly air mobil­i­ty solu­tions in Europe, pro­mot­ing the inno­v­a­tive devel­op­ment of urban air mobil­i­ty with glob­al part­ners.

Damià Cal­vet, the Min­is­ter of Ter­ri­to­ry and Mobil­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment of Catalun­ya, said: “The part­ner­ship with EHang will bring a lot of val­ue to the air­port and Catalun­ya. The two par­ties will fur­ther explore and advance the devel­op­ment of urban air mobil­i­ty, and con­tin­ue to move for­ward on the path of inno­v­a­tive and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment with glob­al part­ners to cre­ate a bet­ter life for Catalun­ya.”

The part­ner­ship also expands EHang’s pres­ence in Spain, after it announced last week that the city of Zaragoza will be the com­pa­ny’s fourth to join its UAM Pilot City ini­tia­tive. The cities of Lliria and Seville are also part of the pro­gramme.

EHang also con­firmed last month that it is work­ing on a longer-range eVTOL air­craft — known as the VT30 — with a range of more than 300km. Its cur­rent flag­ship mod­el, the 216, has a range of 35km and is cur­rent­ly autonomous, but EHang said it plans to build a pilot­ed ver­sion in the near future.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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