EHang Continues “Rapid Path of Global Expansion”

Buoyed by gain­ing its Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the CAAC last Octo­ber, fol­lowed by the all-impor­tant stan­dard Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­tifi­cate two months lat­er, EHang con­tin­ues its rapid path of com­mer­cial expan­sion around the globe.

Dur­ing the last week alone, the UAV com­pa­ny car­ried out flights on the island of Awa­ji, a Hyo­go Pre­fec­ture locat­ed in West­ern Japan, in coop­er­a­tion with busi­ness part­ners, includ­ing the Awa­ji Munic­i­pal Gov­ern­ment. The craft was board­ed by two inspec­tors and then flew autonomous­ly climb­ing to 40 metres at speeds of around 25 kph for four min­utes.

Hyo­go Gov­er­nor Moto­hiko Saito, arrived to inspect the UAV, before watch­ing the flight. An enthu­si­as­tic Saito told the local media he had high expec­ta­tions for the poten­tial of eVTOLS and aims to use the EHang craft for tourist flights as well as aid­ing human­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ters.

With almost cer­tain­ty, the Chi­nese UAV com­pa­ny will be present at the six month Osa­ka Expo in 2025, fly­ing the pub­lic to and from the event as well as being employed for local tourism flights.

Back in Chi­na, the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion of Chi­na (CAAC) has been peer­ing into its crys­tal ball and revealed last week a pre­dic­tion for the country’s “low-alti­tude econ­o­my” (LAE). It is inter­est­ing to note that this phrase to describe the future eVTOL as well as drone indus­tries is tak­ing hold.

At a press con­fer­ence the CAAC revealed the mar­ket size of Chi­na’s LAE (please see image below). The finan­cial fig­ures are impres­sive.

Jun Han, Deputy Head of the CAAC explained the reg­u­la­tor is pro­mot­ing the con­struc­tion of a low-alti­tude flight ser­vice sys­tem and aims to sim­pli­fy appli­ca­tion and approval pro­ce­dures.

As the image shows, the pro­ject­ed growth goes from 500 bil­lion RMB (approx­i­mate­ly USD70 bil­lion) to a mouth-water­ing 3.5 tril­lion RMB (approx USD450 bil­lion) with­in 12 years. And that is just Chi­na!

Mean­while, the pub­lic are keen to know the cost of a tourist flight in a EHang UAV and super­fan, @PhilipFemo, who has a strong pres­ence on social media, recent­ly dis­cov­ered some poten­tial finan­cial fig­ures.  

Accord­ing to a Linkedin post from Femo, the City of Zhuhai has announced a scale of sub­si­dies it plans to grant eVTOL oper­a­tors for launch­ing AAM routes in the city.

An Eng­lish trans­la­tion from a local news sto­ry states, “The city plans to pro­vide sub­si­dies on tick­et sales for eVTOL flights.”

The Sub­sidy Scales Pro­posed

: 150 RMB (USD20) per sight­see­ing flight

: 200 RMB (USD28) per intra-city flight

: 300 RMB (USD42) total per flight

: 400 RMB (USD55) for cross-bor­der pas­sen­ger flights

: 5M RMB annu­al lim­it (USD696,000)

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, this post gained a lot of inter­est from read­ers. In response to var­i­ous ques­tions, Femo replied to the valid­i­ty of such fig­ures.

Philip Femo

He sug­gest­ed, “We will see once the first com­mer­cial scenic route opens for pub­lic. If I had to guess? Aver­age DiDi ride is maybe 20–30 RMB. 3–5x that for a scenic tour? And 60–150 RMB for a scenic tour (+ sub­si­dies). Just spec­u­la­tion and guess­es based on what prices I saw in Chi­na.”

What is excit­ing is that fan­ta­sy is now becom­ing a real­i­ty and, per­haps, in 12 months from now, Chi­na will have a grow­ing num­ber of busy tourist flight attrac­tions, offer­ing an expand­ing rev­enue stream for oper­a­tors.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.ehang.com

(Top image: EHang’s EH216‑S flies close to Zhuhai Opera House)

For the lat­est news, insights and con­tent regard­ing the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket, please join the fol­low­ing eVTOL Insights chan­nels: What­sApp, Sig­nal, Face­book, Insta­gram, Spo­ti­fy, Apple Pod­casts, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.