EHang Partners with Qingdao West Coast New Area

EHang has announced a strate­gic part­ner­ship with Qing­dao West Coast New Area, one of China’s nation­al new areas in Shan­dong province, which comes with a bind­ing $10 mil­lion equi­ty invest­ment.

EHang plans to devel­op the urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) mar­ket in Qing­dao to make Qing­dao a world-class UAM appli­ca­tion demon­stra­tion area, and to estab­lish a North­east Asia region­al head­quar­ters, as well as a nation­al fire­fight­ing busi­ness cen­tre in Qing­dao West Coast New Area.

Qing­dao West Coast New Area will facil­i­tate the local gov­ern­ments’ appli­ca­tions of EHang’s prod­ucts while pro­vid­ing sup­port to the Company’s local busi­ness oper­a­tions, sales and ser­vices, pro­duc­tion and infra­struc­ture con­struc­tion.

Qing­dao West Coast New Area’s invest­ment arm will ini­tial­ly invest a total of$10 mil­lion in the Com­pa­ny through a pri­vate place­ment of new­ly issued Class A ordi­nary shares, with the pur­chase price based on the aver­age of the clos­ing sales prices of its Amer­i­can deposi­tary shares for the 30 trad­ing days imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing Decem­ber 21, 2022.

The pri­vate place­ment is expect­ed to close in the first quar­ter of 2023, sub­ject to the receipt of cer­tain invest­ment-relat­ed reg­u­la­to­ry approvals and clear­ances in Chi­na and the sat­is­fac­tion of oth­er cus­tom­ary clos­ing con­di­tions.

Gui­long Shi, Deputy Direc­tor of the Admin­is­tra­tive Com­mit­tee of Qing­dao West Coast New Area, said: “EHang’s prod­ucts and fleet oper­a­tions are ful­ly in line with Qingdao’s devel­op­ment require­ments for smart, eco-friend­ly and high­ly effi­cient UAM solu­tions.

“We believe it will be a ‘win-win’ coop­er­a­tion with our joint efforts to advance high-end indus­tries and avi­a­tion sec­tors in Qing­dao and to cre­ate a ben­e­fi­cial UAM indus­tri­al ecosys­tem.”

EHang Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer Xin Fang added: “This part­ner­ship is a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for EHang’s long-term growth. With more fund­ing and strong prod­uct demands in the Qing­dao local mar­ket.

“EHang expects to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of Qingdao’s autonomous aer­i­al vehi­cle indus­try through new avi­a­tion busi­ness and low-alti­tude econ­o­my. We believe our coop­er­a­tion will pro­pel Qing­dao to be a world-class, inno­v­a­tive UAM appli­ca­tion demon­stra­tion area with com­pre­hen­sive AAV indus­tri­al chains and com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.”

Last month, EHang announced that its EH216 AAV com­plet­ed its inau­gur­al flight by the Span­ish Nation­al Police at the Nation­al Acad­e­my in Ávi­la, Spain.

Spain: EHang 216 Com­pletes Inau­gur­al Flight by Span­ish Nation­al Police and Begins Tri­al Oper­a­tions

In Novem­ber, EHang signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with Hong Kong-based Air­craft Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny, HAECO Group, to explore advanced aer­i­al mobil­i­ty.

EHang, HAECO Group Sign MoU to Explore AAM