After EHang announced on Monday that its proposal to voluntarily suspend share trading had been approved by Nasdaq “in anticipation of an upcoming announcement concerning a very significant development regarding its business operations,” investors’ have had a nail-biting week pondering what the news might be.
The company stated it would re-open for stock market business on Friday after a four day break. The share price was frozen at USD17.10. Investors waited.
On Thursday, EHang released on Twitter an eight-second video with some jingly up-beat music showing a darkened image of a EH216 alongside a cryptic headline “10 Years Endeavour”. Investors continued to wait.
Well, the wait is finally over. News began trickling through social media around 9.30am (GMT time) with initial tweets from EHang superfan, Robin Bird, and a Tom van Dillen.
Was anyone surprised? No. The smart money was always on this news. EHang had been getting closer and closer to Type certification over a 16 month period. We knew this because the company kept telling the market.
The official release occurred some 30 minutes later, showing again that social media is ahead of the game. It states, “EHang has obtained the type certificate (“TC”) officially issued by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC). This demonstrates that the EH216‑S’s model design fully complies with CAAC’s safety standards and airworthiness requirements, and that the EH216‑S is qualified for conducting passenger-carrying UAV commercial operations.” Adding, “This also serves as an epoch-making milestone for commercial UAM operations.”
Huazhi Hu, Founder, Chairman and CEO of EHang, remarked, “Embracing the TC as our springboard, we will launch commercial operations of the EH216‑S unmanned eVTOLs, prioritising safety above all. This will enable us to steadily progress towards our strategic goal to be a UAM platform operator, and commit to our mission to enable safe, autonomous, and eco-friendly air mobility accessible to everyone.”
Understandably, various factions from the West are not happy. The critics are out with sharpened knives with calls of the craft being unsafe, of flakey certification from the CAAC, and Chinese propaganda. Of course, there is a chance of an accident, as with any new technology, but one critic even suggested, “It would be covered up by the Chinese authorities.”
To counteract such criticism EHang respond by stating in its press release, “The safety, airworthiness, performance, functionality, usability and reliability of the EH216‑S have been thoroughly and rigorously validated through over 500 specific test items, more than 40,000 test flights for adjustments, and formal conformity validation tests encompassing 65 major categories and over 450 individual test items.
“CAAC’s experience and expertise in conducting the EH216‑S airworthiness certification provides a significant reference for the global aviation industry and plays a pivotal role in shaping regulations, standards, and norms for unmanned eVTOL airworthiness certification, serving as a crucial benchmark for the industry worldwide.”
The bottom line being: EHang assisted by CAAC governance, is two years ahead of its competition in the West and to make things worse? The company’s aircraft is autonomous to boot.
The question being. How will this affect EHang’s sales of its 216 aircraft going forward now it has been given Type certification in China allowing for commercial operations. Will the total be hundreds or thousands during the next 12 months? This is what the stock market will now be ruminating. The share price will follow suit.
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(Images: EHang)
edit: Today’s EHang futures share price immediately shot up to USD37.5 on the announcement, but has since dropped back down to around USD26, an hour later, or a 54 percent increase from the previous USD17.10. Expect a topsy-turvy trading day.
