China: Aerofugia Successfully Completes First Trial Flight of Five-Seater eVTOL

Chi­nese car­mak­er, Zhe­jiang Geely, recent­ly announced its sub­sidiary, Aerofu­gia, suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a first test flight of its pro­to­type eVTOL, mov­ing the com­pa­ny clos­er to com­mer­cial ser­vice by no lat­er than 2028, reports scmp.com. 

The tri­al flight of the Aerofu­gia AE200, with a tilt-motor con­fig­u­ra­tion, occurred with­in two months of the com­pa­ny obtain­ing a CAAC licence allow­ing it to begin tests. The air­craft seats one pilot and four pas­sen­gers, and like a major­i­ty of oth­er eVTOLs is aimed at inter­ci­ty and interur­ban area trav­el.

Wang Ke, a car indus­try spe­cial­ist and senior con­sul­tant from Bei­jing-based Analysys, com­ment­ed, “Geely’s suc­cess­ful flight shows it has enough sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal capa­bil­i­ties to realise its com­mer­cial poten­tial.”

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The test flight was com­plet­ed on the same day as anoth­er Chi­nese car man­u­fac­tur­er, Xpeng Motors, announced its own eVTOL com­pa­ny, Aero­HT, received a spe­cial per­mit to con­tin­ue manned flights in its two-seater X2 elec­tric fly­ing car.

The AE200 pro­to­type is the largest eVTOL vehi­cle to com­plete a maid­en flight in Chi­na as it can seat five rather than four or even two pas­sen­gers. An Aerofu­gia spokesper­son remarked that full com­mer­cial cer­ti­fi­ca­tion “is like­ly to be obtained with­in three to five years.”

At present, the AE200’s gov­ern­ment per­mit stip­u­lates that its pur­pose is for sight­see­ing, emer­gency health­care and gen­er­al logis­tics – mak­ing it an alter­na­tive to a car for a person’s dai­ly com­mute.

The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has been grad­u­al­ly relax­ing its restric­tions on low-alti­tude air­space below 1,000 metres for civil­ian use to pro­mote rapid devel­op­ment of the eVTOL and drone indus­tries. In March last year, the Chi­nese Min­istry of Trans­port released a devel­op­ment plan that lists eVTOLS, drones and fly­ing cars as a major area of devel­op­ment between now and 2035.

Li Shu­fu, the bil­lion­aire Founder and Chair­man of Zhe­jiang Geely Pho­to: Simon Song

Back­ground

Geely’s ambi­tions to become involved in the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion began when it agreed to pur­chase U.S‑based fly­ing car start­up Ter­rafu­gia in June, 2017. The craft costs USD279,000 and can trav­el a dis­tance of 800 kilo­me­tres.

Two years lat­er, Geely invest­ed in Ger­man-based eVTOL com­pa­ny, Volo­copter. Then in 2020, Ter­rafu­gia merged with Chi­nese drone-mak­er AOSSCI, to form Aerofu­gia in 2020. The com­pa­ny is based in Cheng­du, cap­i­tal of south­west­ern Sichuan province.

The AE200 eVTOL faces stiff com­pe­ti­tion from oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers in its own coun­try. For exam­ple, EHang and Aut­oFlight are well ahead of Aerofugia’s devel­op­ment, where­as T‑Cab is clos­er to hand, but with a glob­al Urban Air Mobil­i­ty sec­tor pro­ject­ed to become a USD1.5 tril­lion indus­try by 2040, with Chi­na mak­ing up about 29 per­cent of the mar­ket, there is plen­ty of room for com­pe­ti­tion.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.aerofugia.com

(News Source: https://www.scmp.com)

(Top image: Aerofu­gia)