On March 20th at 7 p.m., the "Make Friends" live stream room on Taobao began selling EHang EH216-S unmanned aerial vehicles for human transportation, at a full price of 1.99 million yuan. Prior to this, the Taobao store certified as"EHang Enterprise Store" had listed the EH216-S on March 18th with a price of 2.39 million yuan.
As a leader in the low-altitude economy, EHang has achieved remarkable success in just a decade. But how did they manage to soar so high in such a short time?
"EHang was founded in 2014, and it released the world's first manned autonomous flying vehicle in 2016, and established the world's first intelligent management and dispatch platform centered around unmanned flying in Guangzhou in 2017," said He Tianxing, Vice President of EHang.
In October 2023, EHang's independently developed EH216-S successfully obtained the world's first type certificate and standard airworthiness certificate for unmanned aerial vehicles for passenger eVTOL from the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
What is the significance of this certificate?" All manned aircraft must acquire airworthiness certification, which is a universal rule in the civil aviation industry worldwide. With it, we can proceed with subsequent work and move towards commercialization. So far, there hasn't been a second company in the world to achieve this," He Tianxing explained. Previously, there were no universal rules for unmanned passenger aircraft, making obtaining type certificates and standard airworthiness certificates the biggest challenge.
It is reported that during the certification process, EHang developed a large number of patented technologies and led the world in intellectual property rights in this field.
Why was EHang able to obtain the world's first certificate? He Tianxing told reporters that, on the one hand, China's technological development over the past decade is substantial, laying a particularly good foundation for the development of other industries, ranging from the internet economy to the digital economy. On the other hand, the low-altitude economy is an emerging economic model characterized by digitization, intelligence, and networking, and the development of smart industries has driven opportunities for the low-altitude economy.
He Tianxing stated that in the past decade since its establishment, EHang has obtained flight permits from 14 countries including China, conducted more than 45,000 safe flights globally, leading in flight volume worldwide. The EH216-S model has been test-flown in 14 countries.
In He Tianxing's view, the rapid development of EHang is not only due to the perseverance of employees but also inseparable from the fertile soil of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area(GBA).
"The upstream and downstream industrial chains, supply chains, service chains, capital chains, and talent chains in the GBA offer sufficient resources, providing convenience for our research and development investment, talent cultivation, material supply, and complete machine manufacturing. Here, we don't worry about not finding relevant chain-leading companies, nor do we worry about whether the cost is very high. We can easily find suitable supporting supply chain companies, which helps us achieve technological iteration while maintaining rapid research and development," said He Tianxing.
Source | Yangcheng Evening News
