EHang reveals details about a new, long-range eVTOL concept in call about Q2 2020 financial results

EHang has said it is work­ing on a new autonomous aer­i­al vehi­cle (AAV) with a flight range of more than 100km — which will offer greater dis­tances than its cur­rent two-seater mod­el, the 216.

Although no fur­ther details were revealed in the call about the com­pa­ny’s finan­cial results for Q2 2020 yes­ter­day (Tues­day), EHang’s Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer Huax­i­ang (Edward) Xu told lis­ten­ers that the new AAV is ‘pret­ty much ready and in good shape’.

“Once we release it, you’ll be sur­prised. So stay tuned,” he added.

EHang’s 216 AAV cur­rent­ly has a range of 35km, so this new con­cept will allow the com­pa­ny to offer sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater trav­el­ling dis­tances as its explores new mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties.

In an intro­duc­to­ry address, EHang’s Founder, CEO and Chair­man, Hu Huazhi said: “Due to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, we re-eval­u­at­ed our glob­al mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy in order to min­imise the geo-polit­i­cal risk and to fur­ther EHang’s mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. Notably, Europe is our most impor­tant region after Asia and so was the focus of our changes.

“We believe 200 per cent rev­enue growth is achiev­able as our con­tin­u­ous efforts in inno­va­tion lead to stronger devel­op­ment.”

Xu men­tioned the com­pa­ny is plan­ning a num­ber of flights in Europe ‘with­in the next 30–40 days’, with cities includ­ing Linz in Aus­tria, Rot­ter­dam, the Nether­lands and an unnamed city in France.

He also said EHang has secured orders for the 216 AAV from cus­tomers in Japan and Korea, which has been described as ‘new break­throughs in north Asia.’

“We think the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic is def­i­nite­ly neg­a­tive for our over­all mar­ket of expan­sion, but we still see oppor­tu­ni­ties with good client inter­est. We are hope­ful that once the pan­dem­ic gets under con­trol, we should be able to expand in those mar­kets quick­ly.”

Releas­ing its finan­cial results, the Chi­nese eVTOL devel­op­er report­ed 16 sales of its 216 AAV, ver­sus 14 units in Q2 2019. Total rev­enues were RMB35.7 mil­lion (US$5.1 mil­lion), up 62.7 per cent year-over-year and dri­ven by sig­nif­i­cant growth across all of its rev­enue streams.

It also report­ed an oper­at­ing loss of RMB19.2 mil­lion ($2.7 mil­lion), net loss of RMB19.8 mil­lion ($2.8 mil­lion) and adjust­ed net loss (non-GAAP) was RMB11.7 mil­lion ($1.7 mil­lion), com­pared an adjust­ed net loss of RMB11.4 mil­lion dur­ing the same peri­od in 2019.

Gross mar­gin was 57.6 per cent, a slight decrease of 0.9 per cent point year-over-year due to change in rev­enue mix. Gross prof­it was RMB20.6 mil­lion ($2.9 mil­lion), an increase of 60 per cent year-on-year.

In par­tic­u­lar, air mobil­i­ty solu­tions con­tributed 63.5 per cent of the total rev­enues in Q2 2020. Busi­ness high­lights dur­ing this peri­od includ­ed a strate­gic part­ner­ship with LN Hold­ings, which saw the LN Gar­den Hotel in Guangzhou, Chi­na, become the world’s first Urban Air Mobil­i­ty-themed hotel.

And in May 2020, EHang became the world’s first AAV com­pa­ny to be approved by a nation­al avi­a­tion author­i­ty to car­ry out com­mer­cial pilot oper­a­tion in the cat­e­go­ry of 150 kg plus heavy-lift air logis­tics uses.