EXCLUSIVE: EHang signs major partnership with Thailand’s CP Group to bring urban air mobility operations to the country

eVTOL Insights can exclu­sive­ly reveal that EHang will become the first eVTOL air­craft com­pa­ny to launch urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions in Thai­land, after it announced a major part­ner­ship with con­glom­er­ate CP (Charoen Pokp­hand) Group.

Speak­ing to a source famil­iar with the top­ic, eVTOL Insights was told this agree­ment with CP Group can make Thai­land a sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket for urban air mobil­i­ty. The deal includes the poten­tial for a four-dig­it num­ber of EHang’s logis­tics and pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing AAV mod­els to be deliv­ered over the next two years.

An offi­cial announce­ment with more details will be made next week, but the source also added that type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for its EH216 air­craft from the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion of Chi­na (CAAC) is expect­ed to be announced ‘in the next cou­ple of months’.

CP Group is a major brand in the Asia-Pacif­ic region. It com­pris­es mul­ti­ple busi­ness­es which oper­ate in mul­ti­ple indus­tries and is described as Thai­land’s largest pri­vate com­pa­ny. It holds con­trol­ling stakes in Chareron Pokp­hand Foods, the world’s largest pro­duc­er of feed, shrimp and a glob­al pro­duc­er of poul­try and pork, among oth­er agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts.

It also oper­ates South­east Asi­a’s largest retail busi­ness by rev­enue and is the sole oper­a­tor of 7‑Eleven stores in Thai­land, with more than 12,000 in oper­a­tion, the sec­ond largest in the world. With all this in mind, the com­pa­ny will undoubt­ed­ly play a key role in help­ing to scale up oper­a­tions in the region.

Thai­land is also one of the most pop­u­lar tourist des­ti­na­tions in the world, with an esti­mat­ed 25 mil­lion peo­ple vis­it­ing each year. EHang will no doubt use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case the ben­e­fits of its eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy to more peo­ple, espe­cial­ly after the numer­ous flight demos it has con­duct­ed in Chi­na, Japan and Korea. It has also con­duct­ed sim­i­lar flights in Europe, includ­ing Aus­tria and Esto­nia.

And in Indone­sia, it show­cased the EH216’s sight­see­ing capa­bil­i­ties after com­plet­ing a five-minute flight demon­stra­tion at the Vil­la Black­stone Beach in Bali.

This lat­est announce­ment adds to the grow­ing num­ber of coun­tries that EHang is work­ing with the bring urban air mobil­i­ty to the Asia-Pacif­ic region. Ear­li­er this month, the com­pa­ny signed a part­ner­ship with AEROTREE in Malaysia, in what was described as its biggest pre-order for its eVTOL air­craft.

As well as Malaysia, EHang has received pre-orders from AirX in Japan to sup­port UAM projects across the coun­try, which was also the first to place an order for EHang’s VT-30 air­craft.

A live announce­ment on the news is expect­ed to be made lat­er this month.