"Manned aircraft" ushered in the eve of commercialization, and the low-altitude economy opened up a new track for power batteries

With the "Government Work Report" in March this year, it was proposed to actively build a new growth engine for the low-altitude economy, and the low-altitude economy, which is still on the eve of commercialization, has become a new outlet. As the main scenario of the low-altitude economy, eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft) has also become a hot product.

Among the new business opportunities brought by eVTOL, the power battery industry is the first to get a piece of the cake. Recently, Juwan Technology, which develops ultra-rechargeable batteries, released a new technical cooperation: Juwan Technology Co., Ltd. and EHang officially signed a cooperation agreement to jointly develop the world's first eVTOL aircraft ultra-fast/ultra-fast rechargeable battery solution that meets the airworthiness standards of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, and carry out the joint construction of infrastructure such as supercharging piles and supercharging stations. EHang is currently the first and only air mobility technology company in China to obtain the "Three Passports" for unmanned manned eVTOL.

As a low-altitude vehicle with high safety requirements, the dynamic stability and long endurance of eVTOL are important prerequisites to ensure its safety and commercial application. At present, in addition to Juwan Technology Co., Ltd., power battery companies, including CATL, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, EVE Lithium Energy, and Funeng Technology, have also laid out relevant battery products in low-altitude economic fields such as flying cars and drones.

The reporter learned that manufacturers of manned low-altitude aircraft, including EHang Intelligence and flying car manufacturer Xpeng Huitian, have formulated a commercialization schedule, and will achieve operation in specific areas and specific scenarios as soon as 2025. This also makes the eVTOL power battery supply chain flock to more companies.

New business opportunities for power batteries

According to the definition of the Civil Aviation Administration, low-altitude economy refers to a comprehensive economic format that drives the integrated development of related fields within the low-altitude airspace range of less than 1,000 meters at a vertical altitude of 1,000 meters and extending to no more than 3,000 meters according to actual needs, with vertical take-off and landing aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles as carriers, and multi-scenario low-altitude flight activities such as manning, cargo and other operations as traction. Since the beginning of this year, eVTOL has become a hot product concept in the capital market.

On April 7 this year, EHang's EH216-S unmanned manned aircraft was issued by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) for the world's first unmanned manned eVTOL aircraft Type Certificate (TC), Production License (PC) and Standard Airworthiness Certificate (AC), becoming the only unmanned manned eVTOL aircraft manufacturer with complete "three certificates". EHang said that the EH216-S unmanned manned aircraft is at a critical stage of commercial operation, with an official guide price of 2.39 million yuan per aircraft in the Chinese market, and has already begun to be delivered to customers.

Joining hands with Juwan Technology Co., Ltd. is the first cooperation after EHang obtained the "three certificates". Flying longer, safer, and more cost-optimized are the prerequisites for manned low-altitude aircraft to move from production to commercial operation. As one of the core components of the aircraft, the battery system is the key to achieving this goal, and the battery performance directly determines the range, stability, safety and operational efficiency of the aircraft.

"Compared with the batteries of unmanned aerial vehicles, the demand for power batteries for manned low-altitude aircraft is actually very high. It is necessary not only to ensure the energy density, but also to ensure the speed of high-rate charging and high-rate discharge. Pei Feng, President of Juwan Technology Co., Ltd., said in an interview with the Economic Observer that the most obvious effect of the application and iteration of ultra-fast charging products is to improve the endurance and charging speed of eVTOL aircraft. At present, the ultra-fast rechargeable battery for low-altitude aircraft developed by Juwan uses ternary high-performance materials, the system energy density is 25% higher than that of ordinary aircraft batteries, the cycle service life is more than 2,000 times, and it only takes 5 to 10 minutes to charge 30%-80%, and can reach aviation-grade standards.

In addition, compared with the vehicle power battery, the battery of the low-altitude aircraft is also relatively high in terms of lightweight and heat dissipation, Pei Feng said that Juwan Technology Co., Ltd. uses new materials and new technologies in battery lightweight, and at the same time adopts an offline heat dissipation system, which is not integrated on the aircraft, but is arranged on the charging pile and charging system, which also plays a role in reducing the quality of the battery. In order to ensure safety, there are two completely independent power systems on the battery to back up each other, and any one of them can support the normal operation of the entire aircraft.

"In passenger cars, it's not a big problem to have a slightly heavier battery, but in the air, for every extra kilogram, the loss is very large. So we have very high requirements for energy density, it must be light, it must be safe, and our requirements are much stricter than that of cars. Yang Ning, director of EHang, said. According to the plan, EHang will also work with Juwan Technology to promote the construction of eVTOL ultra-fast charging ecosystem, so as to promote the low-altitude economy to achieve low-cost, large-scale, and high-efficiency commercial operation as soon as possible.

This cooperation marks Juwan Technology's official entry into the field of aircraft power batteries. Juwan Technology Co., Ltd. is a power battery company incubated by GAC Group in 2020, focusing on the research and development of ultra-fast charging power batteries, and its batteries have been installed on the products of GAC's new energy vehicle brand Aion and nearly 10 other car companies.

Some industry views will be the current low-altitude economy hot analogy to the initial stage of new energy vehicle industrialization, the same as at that time, the battery mounted on the low-altitude aircraft also because of the cost, performance, endurance control ability, the first to achieve the track heating.

As early as the end of 2023, Gotion Hi-Tech established a cooperation with EHang, but the two sides jointly developed a power cell solution for eVTOL products instead of super-rechargeable batteries. In addition, CATL said on the investor interactive platform that it is cooperating in the development of a civil electric manned aircraft project on condensed matter batteries. Funeng Technology also said in response to investors' questions that it has cooperated and supplied batteries with customers in the field of manned aircraft, and actively communicated with several potential domestic customers.

On April 26, EVE said at the first quarter performance briefing that EVE had an early layout in the field of eVTOL batteries, and had cooperated with a foreign company for three years of research work, and has now delivered A-sample products and is assisting customers to obtain the certification of relevant aviation systems. In addition, the company has also sent samples to other international customers.

Yang Ning said that improving operational efficiency and reducing operating costs with higher energy density batteries and faster charging times is the premise of accelerating the popularization and application of eVTOL products. With the commercialization of more eVTOL products, power battery companies will start new technology competition in this field.

Commercial operation is yet to start

"It's just too difficult to carry people, and the aviation industry has been a highly regulated industry from the beginning. What is the difficulty of this technology? I believe that many companies can do it to make something that can fly, but it is very difficult to make a product that can continue to fly safely and ensure safety in all aspects. Regarding the pace of commercialization of eVTOL, Yang Ning said that the premise of commercial use is that it must pass the safety barrier and be 100% controllable in technology. In general, the safety difficulty of aircraft is much greater than that of new energy vehicles.

Yang Ning revealed that the commercial rhythm of low-altitude aircraft does not only depend on the manufacturer, EHang already has the production qualification, and then needs to wait for the competent authority to issue an operation license to the operator. "At present, the Civil Aviation Administration of China is still actively promoting this matter, and I believe that the operating license will come out soon. ”

In addition to unmanned low-altitude aerial vehicles, flying cars, as eVTOLs with more challenging application scenarios, are also being prepared for commercialization.

Xpeng Huitian, a subsidiary of Xpeng Motors, is a well-known intelligent electric flying car company in the industry. In 2023, Xpeng Huitian will launch the "Land Aircraft Carrier" split flying car, which has two parts: "Land Traveling Body" and "Flying Body" that can be automatically separated and combined. In March 2024, the application for the type certificate (TC) of the flying body (code: X3-F) of the "Land Aircraft Carrier" was accepted, and it will soon enter the airworthiness certification stage.

According to information provided by Xpeng Huitian, the pre-sale of the split flying car will start in the fourth quarter of this year, and mass production and delivery are planned to begin in the fourth quarter of 2025. In terms of price, R&D is still being promoted in the million-yuan price range, and the specific price depends on the accurate R&D cost in the future.

However, flying cars are not yet commercially available. Xiaopeng Huitian said that the market is still in its infancy, there are no mature products to launch, and regulations are also being explored. At the technical level, there are still technical bottlenecks to be overcome in terms of power, flight control, aerial autopilot, application of lightweight materials, and safety integration technology.

The reporter learned that the application of eVTOL is mainly within the scope of specific scenarios, and compared with the wide application of UAVs, the application scenarios of manned aircraft are more limited. EHang's EH216-S unmanned manned aircraft is currently mainly used for aerial tours and public operations, while Xpeng's split flying car is expanding its applications in public areas such as emergency rescue, patrol, and high-altitude firefighting.

At present, there are 300-400 companies in the world that develop ultra-low-altitude manned aircraft, and a small number of prototypes have taken off, but most of them are still in the process of research and development. According to forecasts made by a number of consulting institutions, the global market size of flying cars will reach about $300 billion in 2030.

In 2023, the scale of the mainland's low-altitude economic market will exceed 500 billion yuan. According to the "Implementation Plan for the Innovative Application of General Aviation Equipment (2024-2030)" jointly issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other four departments in March this year, by 2027, continental aviation emergency rescue, logistics and distribution will be applied on a large scale, and urban air mobility will be commercially operated. By 2030, general aviation equipment will be fully integrated into all fields of people's production and life, forming a trillion-level market scale.

At present, more than 20 cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hefei have written the low-altitude economy into the 2024 government work report, issued targeted policy support, and built a low-altitude economic demonstration zone. This means that the industrial chain and ecological chain of the entire low-altitude economy will expand rapidly in the next five years.