On the evening of July 11, the first flight of manned eVTOL in Yantian District was held in Dameisha Lawn, and the manned flying saucer with a very high-tech appearance slowly lifted into the air, attracting many citizens and tourists to watch.

Low-altitude economy is a dynamic and promising field, a representative of national strategic emerging industries and new quality productivity, and an important engine to promote urban modernization and high-quality economic development. At present, the low-altitude market is highly competitive and has attracted the attention of many investors.

What is eVTOL?

eVTOL is a new type of vehicle for urban low-altitude transportation, which can not only improve the efficiency of current urban transportation, but also is expected to give birth to a series of low-altitude economic industries and services, with huge market potential.

At present, there are three main technical routes in the field of manned eVTOL: multi-rotor, composite wing, and tiltrotor, and the difficulty of research and development of the three increases sequentially, among which the tiltrotor configuration has obvious advantages in endurance, speed, load and comfort.

Multiple eVTOL models are under approval

Manned eVTOL is essentially an electrified aircraft and belongs to general aviation, so it needs to go through the same airworthiness certification as traditional fuel-powered aircraft from production to commercialization, specifically to obtain three certificates, namely type certificate (TC), airworthiness certificate (AC), and production license (PC).

Among them, the type certificate is the most important and the most difficult to obtain. The reason is that eVTOL is a new thing, and there is no mature and universal airworthiness certification standard in the world.

Yang Zhenmei, former director of the Aircraft Airworthiness Certification Department of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, introduced that the current airworthiness regulations adopted in Europe are the special conditions for airworthiness certification SC-VTOL for small manned VTOLs issued by the European Union in 2019, which includes electric and non-electric aircraft; The United States, like China, follows the principle of one thing and one thing. "China hopes that through the accumulation of different models, a universal airworthiness certification standard will gradually be formed in the future."

China and European and United States countries started the eVTOL industry almost simultaneously and are currently competing around the large-scale commercialization of eVTOLs. In October 2023, when enterprises from all over the world were vying to attack the airworthiness certification, the Chinese government took the lead in issuing the world's first eVTOL in terms of airworthiness certification TC certificate to strive for the right to speak in the industry.

More than 10 provinces and cities have laid out urban low-altitude transportation

eVTOL is a popular track for the current low-altitude economy and the main carrier of low-altitude transportation in cities in the future.

For example, Guangdong and Anhui have proposed to encourage and support low-altitude aircraft such as eVTOL to explore and expand new low-altitude business formats such as air commuting, business travel, air ferry, and connecting connections. Bao'an District, Shenzhen, proposed to promote the first flight and first test of manned air mobility, and actively apply for the first batch of national smart air mobility pilot urban areas. Suzhou proposes to build a low-altitude route layout of "channel + network", and build an air corridor with Suzhou as the center and radiating the southeast and northwest.

It has become a consensus in the market that eVTOL has huge development potential. According to data released by the 8th World Drone Congress in 2024, China will be the world's largest urban air mobility market, and it is expected that the Chinese market will account for 20%-25% of the global eVTOL market by 2040.

The founder of Shanghai Yufeng Future Aviation Technology Co., Ltd. estimates that by 2030, the potential market capacity of China's new eVTOL general aviation travel will exceed 300,000 units, including about 77,000 units in the intra-city travel market and about 252,700 units in the domestic cross-city short-distance travel market.

Some business models have begun to enter public life

At present, the business model of low-altitude city management has basically run through, and low-altitude logistics is also in a relatively mature stage of development, and the commercial application is the most extensive. With the issuance of the world's first eVTOL airworthiness certificate in China, urban air mobility (UAM) is gradually moving towards the landing.

In the field of express logistics, which is the most widely used, it will further promote the wide application of large UAVs in logistics scenarios, accelerate the application of layout in cities, islands, mountainous areas and other scenarios, carry out cross-regional, cross-island, and cross-river normalized flights, and plan to commercialize in logistics and distribution, agricultural fire protection, production and sales, aerial surveying and other fields.

It is worth noting that compared with the expensive helicopter experience price in the previous impression, the price of eVTOL has been doubled in low-altitude cultural tourism applications, showing the economic advantages of the application and laying a price foundation for widespread use in the future.

At present, the cost structure of Volant's eVTOL has been very competitive, realizing that the cost of the aircraft and the operating cost have been reduced to 1/10 of the original, a single aircraft can fly about 20 kilometers in 5 minutes, and the cost of a single seat is about 60 yuan, which means 3 yuan per kilometer, and there will be about 30% of the decline space in the future. With the reduction of costs, it is hoped that eVTOL will be put into more application scenarios in the future, so that eVTOL can become a way for people to travel daily.

Investors can focus on the three main channels

At present, the world's mainstream eVTOL manufacturers are concentrated in 2026 to 2027, and after that, profits may be made after that, investors can focus on the three main channels of new low-altitude equipment, new low-altitude scenarios and new infrastructure.

Possessing advanced low-altitude aircraft is one of the prerequisites for promoting the development of low-altitude economy, and the key to grasping the "new" of low-altitude equipment is to promote the technological change, power change and operation system reform of low-altitude aircraft manufacturing as the main line, and strengthen the development and application of new low-altitude aircraft.

In addition, low-altitude infrastructure is the cornerstone of promoting the development of low-altitude economy, fully meet the flight needs of various low-altitude aircraft and the premise of regulatory needs, grasp the "new" changes in low-altitude infrastructure, accelerate the construction of low-altitude intelligent networking, new low-altitude aircraft take-off and landing facilities, forward-looking planning and layout of new low-altitude aircraft energy facilities and other low-altitude new infrastructure.