China's flying car industry quick to commercialise
China's flying car industry quick to commercialise
Chinese firm EHang became the first eVOTL-maker in the world to receive a licence to carry passengers commercially. File photo: Xinhua
China's flying car-makers could get faster in commercialising compared with global peers given the country's dominance in electric vehicle manufacturing, while top policymakers vigorously promote a "low-altitude" economy as a new driver for national growth.
Flying cars or flying vehicles include "electric vertical take-off and landing aircrafts" (eVTOLs) which are a new type of aircraft that utilise electric power for propulsion and are designed to take off and land vertically similar to helicopters, as well as "autonomous aerial vehicles" (AAVs) which are aircraft that operate without direct human control.
Speaking on RTHK's "China Perspectives" podcast, Huang Hailong, an assistant professor at the department of aeronautical and aviation engineering at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, noted that the industry has been growing rapidly in the country in recent years, with market size expected to grow four times higher to reach over 2 trillion yuan in about five years, boosted by technological advancements in EV batteries.
"From the battery innovation perspective, there are lots of Chinese firms focusing on developing high-energy density batteries, which means that for the same size, same weight of a battery, maybe three years ago it can support just 10 minutes' operation, but with the new technology, it can support 20 or 30 minutes [of flying]," Huang said.
He added that while current commercialisation examples of such novel vehicles include those used in agriculture and tourism, they will be able to gradually enrich the urban traffic landscape to make it a more comprehensive three-dimensional system covering land, sea and low-altitude air less than 1,000 metres.
The country's innovators, he added, have also moved quickly to take a leap in turning such visions into an everyday reality, with Guangzhou-based EHang in March becoming the first eVTOL-maker in the world to receive a licence to carry passengers commercially with its twin-passenger EH216-S aircraft which has a top speed of 130km/h and a range of 30km.
The firm is planning to start offering flights to the public in Guangzhou and another big city - Hefei - by the end of the year, as it forecasts that "flying taxi services" will be viable by 2030.
"From the technological perspective, I think this [flying taxi service] is ambitious, but it is still not impossible, because the current trajectory of technological and regulatory and even the infrastructure development is still expanding," he told RTHK.
Echoing Huang, Trevor Allen, Head of Sustainability Research at Markets 360, BNP Paribas, noted that the visions of flying cars do show promise as they play into the country's existing industrial strengths - being the world's largest manufacturer of both the batteries such aircraft need, and of electric vehicles, which involve lots of the same technology.
"In the EV space, over 80 percent of the components or EV batteries are processed through China today by our calculations. There's a very strong supply chain for creating lithium batteries - particularly for vehicles in that regard. That's going to have a clearer carry-over into this eVTOL urban air mobility space in that sense," he told RTHK.
He noted that another distinctive advantage China has in developing the industry is the top-down government guidance and partnership with the private sector, which enables the industry to commercialise faster than competitors.
"When you have the top-down approach, you can often bring your products to the market faster, because you have that coordination of the government driving you to go to market.
"So the government understands what you need in order to make this business work. But also the government is able to relate to you what parameters you're going to have to operate in, so businesses can quite quickly understand the product and service they're going to be able to offer in that regard," he said.
"With these advantages, China is really going to be able to position itself as a first-mover in this industry and a model for other cities of how they can develop this urban air mobility, and to have more cities to really launch their aerial vehicles into their business markets as well."
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