EHang and LN Holdings join forces to build world’s first urban air mobility-themed hotel

EHang has entered a strate­gic part­ner­ship with Shen­zhen-list­ed tourism plat­form com­pa­ny LN Hold­ings, which will see the world’s first urban mobil­i­ty-themed hotel in Guangzhou, Chi­na.

The part­ner­ship between both com­pa­nies will start with a pilot pro­gramme at the LN Gar­den Hotel in Nan­sha. It will pro­mote the inno­v­a­tive inte­gra­tion of aer­i­al sight­see­ing, trav­eller trans­porta­tion, air logis­tics, aer­i­al media light shows, intel­li­gent exhi­bi­tions and edu­ca­tion. It will also pro­mote the new expe­ri­ence of air tourism and explore oth­er com­mer­cial use cas­es for EHang AAVs.

As one of the col­lab­o­ra­tion ini­tia­tives, the intro­duc­tion of EHang 216 AAV ser­vices into LN Gar­den Hotel will also make it the world’s first hotel to offer such ser­vices to its cus­tomers.

Hu Huazhi, Founder, Chair­man and CEO of EHang, said, “We are excit­ed to estab­lish a com­pre­hen­sive and long-term strate­gic part­ner­ship with LN Hold­ings. Help­ing to build Guangzhou into a glob­al air mobil­i­ty pilot city is a mile­stone for us, and fur­ther pro­motes the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the UAM ecosys­tem.

“Guests of LN Gar­den Hotel will expe­ri­ence our one-stop intel­li­gent AAV ser­vices, includ­ing the unique aer­i­al sight­see­ing, con­ve­nient and autonomous air deliv­er­ies and high-tech aer­i­al light shows.”

Senior exec­u­tives from both com­pa­nies attend­ed the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Guangzhou, includ­ing Edward Xu, Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer of EHang, and Feng Jing, Par­ty Sec­re­tary and Chair­man of LN Group.

Media rep­re­sen­ta­tives also attend­ed, with eight jour­nal­ists tak­ing rides on EHang 216 AAVs for aer­i­al trips over LN Gar­den Hotel.

Liang Lingfeng, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of LN Group and Chair­man of LN Hold­ings, com­ment­ed, “We own a broad chain of resources in the tourism indus­try, cov­er­ing trav­el, brand hotels, con­ven­tions, exhi­bi­tions and scenic attrac­tions. By lever­ag­ing our con­trol­ling share­hold­er LN Group’s abil­i­ty to inte­grate its resources in con­sumer sec­tor, coop­er­at­ing with EHang could gen­er­ate incre­men­tal prod­ucts and ser­vices.

“We can ful­fil cus­tomers’ trav­el demands in the air and on the ground by com­bin­ing intel­li­gent tech­nol­o­gy with the tourist expe­ri­ence. Even­tu­al­ly, we will pro­vide new prod­ucts and ser­vices across dif­fer­ent sec­tors, busi­ness cat­e­gories and regions in the coun­try.”

Ehang entered into a strate­gic agree­ment with Guangzhou Gov­ern­ment in August 2019 to devel­op the world’s first urban air mobil­i­ty pilot city. In the future, tourists vis­it­ing Guangzhou can not only trav­el around land­marks such as the Can­ton Tow­er, Bei­jing Road and the Pearl Riv­er, but can also ride in an ‘air taxi’ to enjoy the scenery of Guangzhou city from the air.

As oth­er cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies such as 5G net­works devel­op, AAV tech­nol­o­gy will grad­u­al­ly realise a mar­ket poten­tial in the tril­lions of dol­lars. Accord­ing to Mor­gan Stan­ley, the glob­al UAM mar­ket should reach $1.5 tril­lion by 2040.

The Chi­na mar­ket shows strong poten­tial of $431 bil­lion, account­ing for almost 30 per cent of the glob­al UAM mar­ket.