Mittlerer Osten-Oligarchen haben 7 Milliarden Yuan ausgegeben, um chinesische "Flugautos" zu bestellen.
The flying car industry has made a big deal.
Shanghai Shidi Technology Co., Ltd. has just received an order from the Arab Emirati company Autocraft. It involves 350 E20 electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL) worth $1 billion, which is approximately 7.1 billion yuan.
This amount far exceeds the intended order of 3.5 billion yuan for similar aircraft in the domestic market achieved in February 2025 and also breaks the record for the single amounts of eVTOL orders.
After the deal is completed, these 350 eVTOL will be used in the short - haul transportation and tourism industries in the Middle East and North Africa.
The day before, XPeng HT officially announced the completion of a $250 million Series B financing.
It seems that the short - haul transportation economy will actually experience a boom.
Shidi Technology, founded in May 2021 and having just celebrated its 4th birthday, is a relatively young eVTOL company that has had six financings so far. Behind it stand both well - known Chinese investment companies such as BlueRun Ventures and Zifeng Capital and foreign investors.
Founder Huang Yongwei is a Master of Business Administration from the University of Western Australia and a Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering with first - class honors from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He has over 20 years of experience in aircraft research, development, and management.
Before founding Shidi Technology, Huang Yongwei was the chief engineer at the Airbus China Engineering Center, where he worked on the development of the A350 wide - body jet, and was also an authorized representative at the EASA. In addition, he was the general manager for China at Geely Terrafugia and was responsible for a 1.2 - ton eVTOL aircraft project.
From the beginning, Shidi Technology has focused on the research, development, production, and sales of tilt - rotor aircraft for passenger transportation. The application areas of its products are mainly in the tourism market or short - distance transportation between 30 and 150 kilometers.
For example, the exported E20 eVTOL uses a tilt - rotor configuration and a pure electric drive. It has a wingspan of 12 meters, a range of 200 kilometers, a maximum speed of 320 kilometers per hour, and can carry one pilot and four passengers.
It has a payload of 450 kilograms. The five - blade propeller design reduces the vertical takeoff and landing noise to about 70 decibels, which is equivalent to that of a normal car. It is mainly targeted at the tourism and commuting markets between and within cities as well as short - distance flights.
Compared with road traffic, the greatest advantage of eVTOL is efficiency. The distance from Shanghai Hongqiao Airport to the Orient Pearl Tower in Suzhou is about 90 kilometers. By car, the journey takes about 80 minutes, while the E20 eVTOL would shorten the travel time to 18 minutes.
This eVTOL is also the main sales model of Shidi Technology. In April this year, Bank of China Financial Leasing Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of the Bank of China, entered into a strategic partnership with Shidi Technology and signed a letter of intent for the order of 100 E20 eVTOL.
The application for the airworthiness certification of this model has been accepted by the Civil Aviation Administration of East China and is now in the conformity review phase. It is expected that the certification will be issued in 2027 and mass production will be launched on the market.
With the increasing penetration of electric vehicles, the pure - electric eVTOL also has better development opportunities and is regarded by many as the most suitable product form for future urban air transportation systems.
According to a study by the consulting firm Roland Berger, by 2025, 3,000 flying cars will be used worldwide as air taxis, airport shuttles, and inter - city flights. By 2050, this number will rise to 98,000.
Morgan Stanley predicts that the global flying car industry will reach a market volume of $300 billion by 2030 and $1.5 trillion by 2040.
XPeng CEO He Xiaopeng also predicts that flying cars may reach 20% of the business volume of automobiles in the next 20 years. The construction of the XPeng HT flying car factory is already completed, and it is planned that the factory will be finished in the fourth quarter of this year. The "national flagship" will be mass - produced and delivered in 2026.
In addition to XPeng, Chinese automakers such as Geely, GAC, and Changan are also betting on flying cars. As road traffic becomes more and more overloaded, the sky seems to be a good alternative. However, it is much more difficult to combine the functions of airplanes and cars than to build just cars or airplanes. Problems include flight route planning, infrastructure development, and corresponding legislation.
At least for now, local governments seem to be the biggest drivers of the short - haul transportation economy. If private individuals want to buy an eVTOL and fly freely, they still have to wait a few years.
This article is from the WeChat account "SuperEV - Lab" (ID: SuperEV - Lab), author: Zai Zhou. 36Kr published it with permission.