China: Shanghai-Based eVTOL Startup Close To First Trials

Have you heard of the Ver­tax M1 eVTOL Air­craft? I thought not. It appears Aut­oFlight, EHang, XPeng and oth­ers in Chi­na have anoth­er com­peti­tor.

The eVTOL made its debut at the country’s biggest air show in Zhuhai a few weeks back, reports shine.cn. The Shang­hai-devel­oped five-seat fly­ing taxi is to make its maid­en tri­al flight in the city’s East Chi­na UAV Base in Jin­shan Dis­trict next March.

The man behind the project is com­pa­ny CEO, Xie Ling. He recent­ly told the Shang­hai Dai­ly that the Ver­tax M1 is designed with five seats; has a max­i­mum range of 250 kilo­me­tres; a speed of 200 km per hour; and is pow­ered by 20 rotors.

Xie explained, ”It’s a faster, clean­er and smarter way of trans­porta­tion and cre­ates a future for urban air trav­el avail­able to every­body.” Adding, “But it’s still a long jour­ney before M1’s com­mer­cial use, like city-to-air­port ser­vices, as it still needs mul­ti-step reg­u­la­to­ry approvals.”

Half-Sized Ver­tax M1 pro­to­type eVTOL Dis­played at Zhuhai Inter­na­tion­al Avi­a­tion & Aero­space Exhi­bi­tion

A half-sized M1 pro­to­type was dis­played at the Zhuhai Inter­na­tion­al Avi­a­tion & Aero­space Exhi­bi­tion in south Chi­na’s Guang­dong Province, along with the com­pa­ny’s eVTOL cab­in inte­ri­or (see images).

Xie is opti­mistic for the eVTOL’s devel­op­ment. Shang­hai has a rich tal­ent pool, mature test­ing and secu­ri­ty reg­u­la­tion approval sys­tems along­side many com­po­nent sup­pli­ers based in the Yangtze Delta region. Major com­pa­nies like COMAC are locat­ed here.

The city, locat­ed on China’s cen­tral coast, is the coun­try’s biggest and has become a glob­al finan­cial hub. With a pop­u­la­tion of over 27 mil­lion, it cov­ers a vast area of 6,340 square kilo­me­tres. Xie explained. “Shang­hai is a trea­sure trove and arguably no oth­er city in Chi­na has as rich an avi­a­tion indus­try.”

Found­ed in April 2021, Ver­tax has an R&D cen­tre in Zhangjiang and already has an assem­bly plant set-up in Jin­shan. It is adjoined to an incu­ba­tor com­pa­ny, Fcouri­er Avi­a­tion, for assem­bly and pro­duc­tion locat­ed in Zhong­shan, Guang­dong Province.

Over the last year Ver­tax has received three rounds of financ­ing for a cumu­la­tive amount of almost 100 mil­lion yuan (around USD15 mil­lion). These investors include Chen Dan­ian, founder of Shan­da and Lian­shang Net­works, V Fund and Win­weal Invest­ment.

Present­ly, the com­pa­ny is mass-pro­duc­ing indus­tri­al fixed-wing UAVs (Unmanned Aer­i­al Vehi­cles). The two mod­els named E5 and E6, offer long-range flights with up to 380 km cruis­ing dis­tance, where the lat­ter has a flight time of 4.5 hours. They sup­port pay­loads like laser radar, cam­era and speak­er used for pub­lic mon­i­tor­ing and secu­ri­ty as well as deployed for emer­gency fire fight­ing.

The UAV sales attract annu­al rev­enues of sev­er­al dozen mil­lion yuan (USD3.5 mil­lion) for the com­pa­ny, includ­ing over­seas orders from Sau­di Ara­bia. This cash­flow assists with the M1 devel­op­ment.

Ver­tax CEO Xie Ling along­side M1 eVTOL cab­in

The star­tup’s devel­op­ment fits well with Shang­hai’s lat­est ini­tia­tive to devel­op five future strat­e­gy indus­tries includ­ing health, smart devices and space. The eVTOL indus­try with its AI flight con­trol, avi­a­tion design and new mate­r­i­al inno­va­tion, is high­light­ed in this report. By 2030, the out­put val­ue of these five future indus­tries “could reach around 500 bil­lion yuan,” says a research report.

Wu Jincheng, Direc­tor of the Shang­hai Com­mis­sion of Econ­o­my and Infor­ma­tion, com­ment­ed, “These future indus­tries have cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy, dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion, strate­gic val­ue and explo­sive prospects.”

The inno­va­tions include brain-com­put­er inter­faces, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, eVTOL and 6G. The tech zones men­tioned include Zhangjiang and Jin­shan’s UAV base where Ver­tax is locat­ed.

(News Source: https://www.shine.cn/)

(images: Ver­tax)