Text | Little Lou Fish
Edit | Yang Xuran
About a year ago, Boeing completed its acquisition of Wisk Aero, a maker of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, and earlier this year added a full $450 million to support the company's development of driverless air taxis. This makes Wisk Aero the most well-funded "startup" of its kind.
Boeing's chief technology officer said that it plans to enter the flying car business market in Asia by 2030, focusing on tapping the needs of customers in congested cities for fast travel, and Japan, which has a long-term cooperation with Boeing, is expected to become the first Asian market that Boeing chooses to explore.
Another reason may be that before Boeing, a number of companies had applied to the Japanese government for flying taxi certification, including homegrown startup SkyDrive and Germany's VoloCopter. It is said that at the 2025 Osaka Kansai World Expo, the eVTOLs of these companies will also be unveiled and flying.
China is also vigorously developing the low-altitude economy: Zhuhai recently put forward a plan to build a "city in the sky" by 2035, Chengdu hopes to upgrade the industrial drone industry chain through a three-year action plan, Guangdong Province has released a list of application scenario opportunities to promote low-altitude economy-related projects, and Suzhou, Wuxi, Hefei and other strong cities have also laid out.
And it's not just Boeing that is eyeing the eVTOL and low-altitude markets, and the more radical players are actually new energy companies that are gaining momentum. If they can get a piece of the pie, it means greater market opportunities and development space for these cutting-edge companies in the future.
01 Drones
Perhaps when it comes to the low-altitude economy, everyone is most likely to think of flying cars, airbuses and other pictures, but in fact, the first to open the low-altitude market is drones.
Because of the advantages of non-manned, small size and low cost, industrial-grade UAVs have been favored by public utilities in Europe, America and Asia in recent years, and have been widely used in scientific exploration, agriculture and forestry plant protection, power line inspection, aerial photography, environmental monitoring, earthquake relief and other fields.
Nowadays, new application scenarios of drones are emerging: drones can send blood to emergency in half an hour after a two-hour drive from the blood station to the hospital, drones lift 15-kilogram water bags and drop them accurately to the fire spot, drones deliver more than 10,000 takeaways a month in Shenzhen, which will be used to deliver retail goods......
Drones have successfully entered thousands of households, gradually developing from a somewhat expensive toy to a tool that can be used to work and make money. By combining with traditional industries, the scale of the UAV market at home and abroad has achieved rapid growth.
In 2023, there will be more than 2,300 civil drone research and development enterprises in the mainland, more than 1,000 drone products will be mass-produced, more than 3.17 million civilian drones will be delivered, and the scale of the civil drone industry will exceed 120 billion yuan, ranking first in the world, and it is expected to exceed 200 billion yuan by 2025.
According to the latest report by the QYResearch research team, the global drone market is expected to reach $13.73 billion in 2029, with a compound annual growth rate of 7.9% in the next few years. DJI, AeroVironment, Lockheed Martin, Parrot, Yamaha and other companies have taken control of a large share of the global market.
The growth of the scale of the UAV industry has also led to the progress of technology research and development, especially in the core sensing technology, energy technology, communication technology, flight control technology, intelligent control technology, etc., laying the foundation for the development of eVTOL.
For example, the flight control technology of multi-rotor UAVs can be directly used for multi-rotor eVTOL, and the high-energy-density batteries and high-efficiency motors used by UAVs can provide reliable power system options for eVTOL in terms of endurance and load capacity, and UAV testing can be used to verify the key technologies of eVTOL at a small scale and low cost.
More importantly, the drone industry has cultivated a number of innovative enterprises and R&D talents, and these industrial resources and contact construction also have a positive impact on the R&D and promotion of eVTOL.
In Shenzhen, where more than 1,500 UAV industry chain enterprises represented by DJI, CITIC Haizhi, Eastern General Aviation, EHang and EHang are gathered, their products have covered a variety of application scenarios. The agglomeration of the industrial chain has also allowed these enterprises to reduce production costs and enhance their competitiveness.
CCTV report on electric air routes
In 2023, 77 new drone logistics routes will be opened, a total of 156 drone routes will be opened, 89 drone docking stations will be established, and 610,000 cargo drone flights will be realized, ranking first in the country.
With these industrial foundations in place, it makes sense that the world's first electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) cross-sea and cross-city airroute will make its first flight between Shenzhen and Zhuhai.
02 Electrodynamics
Although the name contains the word "aircraft", eVTOL is more like a product of the development of the new energy industry to a certain stage than the aviation industry.
Here is the concept of eVTOL and flying car: eVTOL is mainly designed for vertical take-off and landing, which can fly in the air, while flying car refers to a vehicle that can fly in the air and travel on the ground at the same time, not only has the ability to take off and land vertically.
In the era of fuel engines, flying cars were not developed because they could not solve the technical problems of engine size and weight. American aviation pioneer Glenn Curtis built the world's first flying car, Autoplane, in 1917, with 12.2-meter-long wings, but could only fly short distances.
It is the maturity of power battery technology that has brought a turnaround to flying cars and eVTOLs.
Xpeng Huitian is currently the most concerned related start-up company
One of the core features of eVTOL is that it replaces the internal combustion engine system with an electric powertrain, so that innovative designs such as multi-rotor, tiltrotor or fixed-wing with vertical take-off and landing that are difficult to achieve in traditional internal combustion engine aircraft can be adopted, and can also better adapt to the trend of electrification and intelligence.
With the advancement of battery technology, the continuous improvement of energy density, and the reduction of battery size and weight, the endurance and load capacity of eVTOL can be enhanced, and at the same time, it can also have the advantages of high safety, low cost, low noise, simple maintenance, energy saving and environmental protection.
CATL, a leading power battery company, has even established a joint venture with COMAC to promote the research and development and application of electric aircraft and develop civil electric manned aircraft projects.
The same is true for flying cars, which use a high-energy-density battery pack as an electric motor, utilize a variety of fixed-wing, rotary-wing, or tilt-rotor designs to generate lift, and often include a transition mechanism (e.g., tiltrotor or folding wing design) that allows the vehicle to transition from ground-based to air-to-air mode.
In addition, eVTOLs and flying cars also require highly automated flight control systems (including perception, decision-making, and control) that can realize the perception and emergency recovery of low-altitude meteorological environments, while using advanced sensors and AI technologies to achieve unmanned autonomous flight capabilities.
The above technologies have long been integrated and applied in new energy vehicles, and it is no wonder that Tesla, GAC, Xpeng, Geely and other new energy vehicle companies are interested in competing in the flying car track.
At present, Xpeng Motors, which has the fastest progress, has planned to open global reservations for Xpeng Huitian's split flying car "Land Aircraft Carrier" at the Zhuhai Air Show in November this year, with a price of more than 1 million yuan, and plans to deliver it on a large scale by the end of 2025.
Behind the leading companies in the eVTOL industry, we see more Boeing, airlines, aerospace Tier 1 suppliers and established car companies.
In addition to financial support, airlines' help with eVTOLs is multifaceted. For example, through pre-orders and intent orders, airlines can drive R&D investment in eVTOL components across the upstream industry chain, and help eVTOL manufacturers communicate with regulators to obtain airworthiness certification.
Airlines can also rely on years of market operation and brand image to help eVTOL manufacturers design aircraft that are more in line with actual operational needs, develop service solutions that meet the needs of passengers, and improve public understanding and acceptance of eVTOLs while conducting market validation.
But even with the backing of successful airlines and car brands, it will not be easy to commercialize eVTOLs and flying cars.
03 Commercialization
The concept of eVTOL can be said to have been born along with the concept of urban air mobility (UAM), and solving the problem of urban traffic congestion through low-altitude travel is the biggest source of demand for eVTOL.
Urban air mobility has the characteristics of fully automatic and unmanned, fast and convenient, centralized platform, sharing economy, green and low-carbon. According to Morgan Stanley's forecast, the total output value of the urban air mobility industry can reach $1 trillion by 2040 and $9 trillion by 2050.
In addition to urban air mobility, air tourism and entertainment tourism, and air emergency rescue are also theoretically also application scenarios where eVTOL has the opportunity to show its strengths.
However, in order for eVTOL to become a consumer product such as automobiles and aircraft, it not only needs to meet the travel needs of end consumers in the corresponding scenarios, but also needs to achieve good social and economic benefits.
EHang, which just obtained the world's first eVTOL production license this month, plans to mass-produce the EH-216-S at a price of 2.39 million yuan per unit, which is significantly lower than the price of a helicopter and roughly the same price as luxury cars such as Porsche and Ferrari, and because of the electricity, its maintenance and use costs are not high.
In crowded cities, eVTOL can save about 4/5 of the time compared to a car for the same distance, and it seems to be a good option for luxury car consumers.
However, if eVTOL is only aimed at the wealthy, it may not be worth the local government to build supporting infrastructure such as charging piles and parking airports, and spend a lot of manpower and material resources to maintain order in the air. After all, eVTOL is to operate in low-altitude areas of the city, and the slightest carelessness may affect a large number of residents.
Therefore, eVTOL is likely to be used in the field of public services, but compared with taking a few dollars at a time, the single fare of eVTOL is at least several times more expensive, and the number of people that an eVTOL can transport is far lower than that of a subway.
With the experience of the general loss-making operation of subways, local governments must be careful when spending money to build supporting infrastructure for low-altitude travel. If the speed of supporting infrastructure construction cannot keep up, even if the eVTOL is mature in terms of technology, it will not make the customer experience feel good.
What's more, eVTOL also requires universities and other institutions to train a group of professional pilots, maintenance personnel and even flight attendants, just like the aviation industry experienced many years ago.
Low-altitude Economic Index Performance (March 2024 to date)
Therefore, the low-altitude economy must be a slow-heating type, enterprises can not rush up, and the industry cannot bubble, like some companies in the A-share market to rub the concept, or vague to provoke investor sentiment, is not a long-term way.
The government has high hopes for the low-altitude economy, because its industrial chain is long and has strong driving capacity, which can effectively integrate three-dimensional space resources, attract all kinds of investment, increase employment opportunities, generate potential consumption, and bring more benefits to people's livelihood.
In the past, China failed to grab any market share in the aircraft manufacturing industry chain, and COMAC is still catching up with Boeing and Airbus. However, on the new track of low-altitude travel, it is the time for "ten thousand types of frost to compete for freedom", and I believe that Chinese companies can make a lot of progress.