EHang receives first type certification from China’s CAAC for its EH216‑S eVTOL aircraft

After EHang announced on Mon­day that its pro­pos­al to vol­un­tar­i­ly sus­pend share trad­ing had been approved by Nas­daq “in antic­i­pa­tion of an upcom­ing announce­ment con­cern­ing a very sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment regard­ing its busi­ness oper­a­tions,” investors’ have had a nail-bit­ing week pon­der­ing what the news might be. 

The com­pa­ny stat­ed it would re-open for stock mar­ket busi­ness on Fri­day after a four day break. The share price was frozen at USD17.10. Investors wait­ed.

On Thurs­day, EHang released on Twit­ter an eight-sec­ond video with some jing­ly up-beat music show­ing a dark­ened image of a EH216 along­side a cryp­tic head­line “10 Years Endeav­our”. Investors con­tin­ued to wait.

Well, the wait is final­ly over. News began trick­ling through social media around 9.30am (GMT time) with ini­tial tweets from EHang super­fan, Robin Bird, and a Tom van Dillen.

EH216‑S TYPE CERTIFIED.

After a decade of fly­ing elec­tric birds, @EHANG $EH has achieved the world’s first & only type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of pilot­less pas­sen­ger air­craft.

This unprece­dent­ed achieve­ment makes EH216 the world’s first & only type cer­tifi­cat­ed #eVTOL pas­sen­ger air­craft. pic.twitter.com/Tkc5LGLzuT

— RobinBird216 (@RobinBird216) Octo­ber 13, 2023

This just in: EHang (NASDAQ: EH) has received the world’s FIRST & only type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of pilot­less pas­sen­ger air­craft in Chi­na! Incred­i­ble.#chi­na #evtol #3dmobility #ehang #trans­for­ma­tion #inno­va­tion­mind­se­tasaser­vice #greenkern #bei­jing pic.twitter.com/ernTQokqpP

— Tom van Dillen (@vandillenpek) Octo­ber 13, 2023

Was any­one sur­prised? No. The smart mon­ey was always on this news. EHang had been get­ting clos­er and clos­er to Type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion over a 16 month peri­od. We knew this because the com­pa­ny kept telling the mar­ket.

The offi­cial release occurred some 30 min­utes lat­er, show­ing again that social media is ahead of the game. It states, “EHang has obtained the type cer­tifi­cate (“TC”) offi­cial­ly issued by the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion of Chi­na (CAAC). This demon­strates that the EH216‑S’s mod­el design ful­ly com­plies with CAAC’s safe­ty stan­dards and air­wor­thi­ness require­ments, and that the EH216‑S is qual­i­fied for con­duct­ing pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing UAV com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.” Adding, “This also serves as an epoch-mak­ing mile­stone for com­mer­cial UAM oper­a­tions.”

Huazhi Hu, Founder, Chair­man and CEO of EHang, remarked, “Embrac­ing the TC as our spring­board, we will launch com­mer­cial oper­a­tions of the EH216‑S unmanned eVTOLs, pri­ori­tis­ing safe­ty above all. This will enable us to steadi­ly progress towards our strate­gic goal to be a UAM plat­form oper­a­tor, and com­mit to our mis­sion to enable safe, autonomous, and eco-friend­ly air mobil­i­ty acces­si­ble to every­one.”

Under­stand­ably, var­i­ous fac­tions from the West are not hap­py. The crit­ics are out with sharp­ened knives with calls of the craft being unsafe, of flakey cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the CAAC, and Chi­nese pro­pa­gan­da. Of course, there is a chance of an acci­dent, as with any new tech­nol­o­gy, but one crit­ic even sug­gest­ed, “It would be cov­ered up by the Chi­nese author­i­ties.”

To coun­ter­act such crit­i­cism EHang respond by stat­ing in its press release, “The safe­ty, air­wor­thi­ness, per­for­mance, func­tion­al­i­ty, usabil­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of the EH216‑S have been thor­ough­ly and rig­or­ous­ly val­i­dat­ed through over 500 spe­cif­ic test items, more than 40,000 test flights for adjust­ments, and for­mal con­for­mi­ty val­i­da­tion tests encom­pass­ing 65 major cat­e­gories and over 450 indi­vid­ual test items.

“CAAC’s expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in con­duct­ing the EH216‑S air­wor­thi­ness cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­vides a sig­nif­i­cant ref­er­ence for the glob­al avi­a­tion indus­try and plays a piv­otal role in shap­ing reg­u­la­tions, stan­dards, and norms for unmanned eVTOL air­wor­thi­ness cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, serv­ing as a cru­cial bench­mark for the indus­try world­wide.”

The bot­tom line being: EHang assist­ed by CAAC gov­er­nance, is two years ahead of its com­pe­ti­tion in the West and to make things worse? The company’s air­craft is autonomous to boot.

The ques­tion being. How will this affect EHang’s sales of its 216 air­craft going for­ward now it has been giv­en Type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Chi­na allow­ing for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions. Will the total be hun­dreds or thou­sands dur­ing the next 12 months? This is what the stock mar­ket will now be rumi­nat­ing. The share price will fol­low suit.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.ehang.com

(Images: EHang)

edit: Today’s EHang futures share price imme­di­ate­ly shot up to USD37.5 on the announce­ment, but has since dropped back down to around USD26, an hour lat­er, or a 54 per­cent increase from the pre­vi­ous USD17.10. Expect a top­sy-turvy trad­ing day.