“EHang Strengthens Collaboration with Hefei Government, to Establish eVTOL VT35 Product Hub”

EHang announced this week, it has signed an invest­ment agree­ment with the Hefei gov­ern­ment to estab­lish a prod­uct hub for its eVTOL VT35 series, reports a press release. 

The VT35 is EHang’s new gen­er­a­tion of long‑range, lift‑and‑cruise, autonomous elec­tric eVTOL. The two par­ties plan to joint­ly invest in and estab­lish a com­pre­hen­sive base for VT35 prod­ucts in the city of Hefei, locat­ed in Anhui Province, cov­er­ing R&D, test­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, air­wor­thi­ness cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, sup­ply chain man­age­ment, sales, oper­a­tions and tal­ent devel­op­ment.

The part­ner­ship is a sig­nif­i­cant upgrade to EHang’s base at its East Chi­na Region­al Head­quar­ters in Hefei and accel­er­ates indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of the VT35 series. 

The final invest­ment is esti­mat­ed to be close to RMB1 bil­lion. In addi­tion, the city gov­ern­ment plans to pro­vide EHang with com­pre­hen­sive sup­port worth RMB500 mil­lion, includ­ing orders for eVTOL air­craft, invest­ments, as well as oth­er areas of coop­er­a­tion across the indus­try chain.

Huazhi Hu, Founder, Chair­man, and CEO of EHang, com­ment­ed, “Since  part­ner­ing with Hefei in 2023, we have accom­plished impor­tant mile­stones. These include launch­ing EH216‑S com­mer­cial flights; achiev­ing a break­through in sol­id-state lithi­um eVTOL bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy; and estab­lish­ing the VT35 series prod­uct hub. Each step brings our shared vision clos­er to real­i­ty.” 

He con­tin­ued, “Hefei’s strong sup­ply chain and for­ward-think­ing poli­cies has helped us turn the city into an inno­va­tion base. Here, research and devel­op­ment, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and dai­ly oper­a­tions all hap­pen togeth­er.” Adding, “By work­ing with the city, we will speed up the devel­op­ment of safe and scal­able advanced air mobil­i­ty and dri­ve high-qual­i­ty growth in the region.”

Please Watch Video (one hour 55 minute film of Hefei City)

EHang’s Type Cer­tifi­cate (TC) appli­ca­tion for the VT35 was offi­cial­ly accept­ed by the CAAC in Feb­ru­ary and is cur­rent­ly under the air­wor­thi­ness review process. 

EHang aims to car­ry out this cer­ti­fi­ca­tion work in Hefei and suc­cess­ful­ly achieve the TC, Pro­duc­tion Cer­tifi­cate and Stan­dard Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­tifi­cate for the VT35. In addi­tion, the com­pa­ny will assist its joint Hefei ven­ture, Heyi Avi­a­tion Co, to apply for the first Air Oper­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate. This will enable a wide range of oper­a­tions includ­ing urban and inter­ci­ty pas­sen­ger trans­port, logis­tics and emer­gency res­cue in Hefei and the broad­er East Chi­na region.

Gaoyun Fei, Sec­re­tary of the CPC Hefei Munic­i­pal Com­mit­tee, remarked, “EHang will con­tin­ue to grow in Hefei, strength­en­ing coop­er­a­tion with uni­ver­si­ties, research insti­tu­tions and lead­ing com­pa­nies, as well as help bring more advanced tech­nolo­gies to the city.” 

He also encour­aged EHang to attract more high-qual­i­ty projects; expand into areas such as logis­tics, fire pro­tec­tion and tourism; and work togeth­er to improve the low-alti­tude econ­o­my’s indus­tri­al ecosys­tem.

The VT35 is EHang’s next-gen­er­a­tion, long-range, lift-and-cruise, pilot­less, pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing eVTOL air­craft. It is designed for medi­um to long-dis­tance air mobil­i­ty includ­ing inter­ci­ty, cross-sea and cross-moun­tain trans­port. 

Build­ing on the VT30 pro­to­type, the VT35 intro­duces major upgrades such as advanced autonomous flight con­trol and propul­sion sys­tems.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.ehang.com

(Top image: VT35 is an upgrade of the orig­i­nal VT30)

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