EHang Announces Delivery “of Three eVTOLs for Sightseeing Flights in Wuhan”

Now the com­pa­ny has been giv­en the go-ahead by the CAAC for com­mer­cial flights in Chi­na, EHang orders for its 216‑S autonomous air­craft begin to flow. Although, first as a trick­le.

The com­pa­ny proud­ly announced this week via social media that three 216‑S air­craft have been deliv­ered to a cus­tomer in Wuhan. They are to be used as aer­i­al sight­see­ing vehi­cles at the Dinghy Eco­log­i­cal Tourism and Scenic Area described as “one of Wuhan’s most breath­tak­ing nation­al 5A scenic spots nes­tled in the heart of the down­town area.”

EHang writes on Linkedin, “More and more part­ners in Chi­na are active­ly on-board­ing with us! The demand for EH216‑S is surg­ing, high­light­ing the immense val­ue we bring to cus­tomers in the Chi­nese mar­ket!”

The post was quick­ly respond­ed to by Frédéric Aguet­tant, Founder of France-based Heli­pass, the air mobil­i­ty dig­i­tal plat­form for heli­copter, eVTOL and Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, who wrote, “Hel­lo con­grat­u­la­tions. We are the book­ing plat­form and would like to inte­grate your expe­ri­ence on our plat­form. Please con­tact me.”

Pure spec­u­la­tion, of course, but does Aguet­tant have one eye on the impend­ing Paris Olympic Games in July?

Mean­while, EHang has much to prove this year. The com­pa­ny has a head start over its pri­ma­ry Chi­nese rival Xpeng and must make the most of this. Ini­tial­ly focussing on the sight­see­ing mar­ket is a sen­si­ble step, but its 216‑S remains pricey at around USD333,000 com­pared to the Xpeng X2 and indi­vid­ual sales from tourism com­pa­nies may remain small giv­en the amount of mon­ey required to make a return, in this case, a USD1 mil­lion out­lay. That is a lot of sight-see­ing trips!

EHang also faces a num­ber of law­fare cas­es from U.S law firms, whom like ambu­lance-chasers, see an oppor­tu­ni­ty of mak­ing finan­cial remu­ner­a­tion from dis­grun­tled investors who lost a great deal of mon­ey on EHang shares since Feb­ru­ary 2021, claim­ing “poten­tial­ly decep­tive prac­tices.” All of this has been hot­ly refut­ed by the com­pa­ny.

Its recent share price woes have not been helped either by China’s recent Stock Mar­ket sell-off, trig­gered, some say, by a poten­tial Don­ald Trump Pres­i­den­cy, who placed enor­mous U.S trad­ing tar­iffs on the coun­try dur­ing his pre­vi­ous time in pow­er. Yet, this is lit­tle more than polit­i­cal swag­ger from an opti­mistic Repub­li­can par­ty. 

Real­is­ti­cal­ly, the three main Chi­nese Stock Mar­kets have been hit by a series of major upsets includ­ing the liq­ui­da­tion of Chi­na Ever­grande, the world’s most indebt­ed prop­er­ty devel­op­er. Ever­grande has assets of about USD245 bil­lion, but owes over USD 300 bil­lion lead­ing to a loss of at least USD55 bil­lion. While its demise has been viewed as a “con­trolled col­lapse,” this still rais­es “sys­temic risk and is hurt­ing investors,” say mar­ket ana­lysts.

There­fore, it is of no sur­prise to see EHang’s share price suf­fer­ing along­side most oth­er Chi­nese stocks. For exam­ple, yes­ter­day the share fell again, this time close to 7 per­cent end­ing at USD9.54 on the NASDAQ. Com­pare this to EHang’s recent high of USD20.30 back in Octo­ber. It has been noth­ing but pos­i­tive news for the com­pa­ny since then, yet a share price has lit­tle to do with such things, instead rely­ing heav­i­ly on mar­ket sen­ti­ment, which at present is quite appalling, with Chi­nese stock exchange prices at an over­all five year low. A clear lack of tar­get­ed stim­u­lus from Bei­jing has also heav­i­ly weighed on mar­ket sen­ti­ment and the recent sell-off. Some doom­say­ers even sug­gest Chi­na is poten­tial­ly fac­ing a 1929 Wall Street Crash. 

This present ner­vous­ness has led to antic­i­pa­tion of more force­ful Chi­nese gov­ern­ment efforts to end the nation’s stock rout, with reg­u­la­tors plan­ning to brief Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping today (Feb­ru­ary 6th). Accord­ing to a state­ment from China’s secu­ri­ties and reg­u­la­to­ry com­mis­sion this week, “It will guide insti­tu­tion­al investors … to enter the mar­ket with greater efforts.”  Again sug­gest­ing an impend­ing finan­cial bail out to end the present jit­ters.

For the very brave, this could be an excel­lent time to buy EHang shares, giv­en the progress the com­pa­ny has made dur­ing the last three months.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.ehang.com/

(Images: EHang)

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