EHang Says “All Planned Tests for EH216‑S Type Certification Completed 100%”

It is good news for sup­port­ers of EHang. After the com­pa­ny has stat­ed for more than a year that the process towards full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion was over 90 per­cent com­plete, now the com­pa­ny is say­ing “All Planned Tests for EH216‑S Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is Com­plet­ed 100%,” reports a press release. The com­pa­ny points out this is the first Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its kind world­wide and is “the only one for an unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle, giv­en oth­ers have pilots on board.”

In the release EHang com­ments, “The team spent 31 months unwa­ver­ing efforts to final­ly meet the safe­ty stan­dards and air­wor­thi­ness require­ments by the CAAC. Through­out this jour­ney, we have over­come var­i­ous chal­lenges and final­ly suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed all of the sub­stan­tive tasks.” 

It goes on, “Rang­ing from bat­tery, envi­ron­ment, mate­r­i­al, strength, elec­tron­ics, soft­ware, data link to ground con­trol sta­tion, we have suf­fi­cient­ly proved that EH216‑S meets the safe­ty stan­dards and air­wor­thi­ness require­ments by the CAAC, through sci­en­tif­ic approach­es, mul­ti-angle demon­stra­tions, rig­or­ous test­ing, and con­tin­u­ous opti­mi­sa­tions.”

This mile­stone paves the way for EHang’s com­mer­cial oper­a­tions to begin in the next stage. The com­pa­ny says, “We have devel­oped 20 oper­a­tion spots for aer­i­al sight­see­ing in 18 Chi­nese cities. More than 9,300 safe­ty-ensured oper­a­tional tri­al flights for low-alti­tude tourism and aer­i­al sight­see­ing have been con­duct­ed by EH216‑S at these sites, which paves the way for future com­mer­cial oper­a­tions fol­low­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

Mean­while, as of the end of July 2023, the “flight foot­prints of EH216 series AAVs” have extend­ed to 14 coun­tries across Asia, Europe and Amer­i­c­as, with a total of more than 39,000 demo and tri­al flights.

EHang explains that in Chi­na, a range of favourable poli­cies regard­ing the “Low-alti­tude Econ­o­my” has been estab­lished since the begin­ning of 2023. Per the report of the Nation­al Low-alti­tude Econ­o­my Inte­gra­tion and Inno­va­tion Research Cen­ter, 16 provin­cial gov­ern­ments have includ­ed spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sions relat­ed to the Low-alti­tude Econ­o­my in their 2023 Gov­ern­ment Work Reports. These gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives focus on the unmanned avi­a­tion indus­try with­in the 20 des­ig­nat­ed exper­i­men­tal zones across Chi­na. 

Mean­while In June, Chi­na’s State Coun­cil and the Cen­tral Mil­i­tary Com­mis­sion offi­cial­ly issued the Inter­im Mea­sures for the Flight Man­age­ment of Unmanned Aer­i­al Vehi­cles (UAVs), effec­tive on Jan­u­ary 1, 2024. It’s the first spe­cial admin­is­tra­tive reg­u­la­tion of its kind in Chi­na, to pro­vide a clear and com­pre­hen­sive reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tem for dif­fer­ent types of UAVs, and advo­cate gov­ern­ments’ sup­ports of relat­ed R&D, appli­ca­tions, infra­struc­ture and ser­vices. It lays a foun­da­tion for safe flight oper­a­tions of UAVs in Chi­na, includ­ing pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing autonomous aer­i­al vehi­cles.

So, what does this all mean?

Some involved in the eVTOL indus­try are scep­ti­cal of EHang’s com­ments. “All planned tests is com­plet­ed 100 per­cent.” What exact­ly does this refer to? Also the release states, “After fin­ish­ing the remain­ing pro­ce­dures, EHang expects to obtain the type cer­tifi­cate of EH216‑S from the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion of Chi­na soon.” Soon being the oper­a­tive word. So, the CAAC has not actu­al­ly giv­en the com­pa­ny the go-ahead to begin com­mer­cial flights quite yet. EHang clar­i­fies, “…com­mer­cial oper­a­tions to begin in the next stage.” So when does this start? 

Huazhi Hu, EHang’s Founder and CEO, also offers a quote to con­firm this. “This sets the stage for us to secure the type cer­tifi­cate soon and pro­ceed with our endeav­ours to ini­ti­ate com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.” So, per­haps this lat­est announce­ment is just smoke and mir­rors, after all? Either that or those scep­tics from the indus­try are find­ing it hard to believe that the com­mer­cial eVTOL mar­ket is about to begin, when in the West, 2025 seems prob­a­bly to be the ear­li­est date. Not for­get­ting that the EHang 216 is autonomous and doesn’t require a pilot which only makes the craft even fur­ther ahead of its rivals.

What does become crys­tal clear from the company’s Q2 finan­cial results released also this week, is the grow­ing impor­tance for EHang to begin com­mer­cial activ­i­ty and start attract­ing finances as “soon” as pos­si­ble. Total rev­enues are down from Q1 (RMB22.2 mil­lion to RMB10 mil­lion); loss­es con­tin­ue to mount up; and sales fell from 11 units in Q1 to just 5 in Q2. The bal­ance sheet is not look­ing healthy, although an addi­tion­al USD23 mil­lion equi­ty invest­ment has been found to keep the wolf from the door for anoth­er year, at least.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.ehang.com/ehangaav

(Images: EHang)