21st Century Business Herald reporter Zhao Yunfan reporting from Shanghai

Since the beginning of the year, "low-altitude economy" has become a common buzzword on the industrial side, the policy side, and even the capital market side.

According to statistics, more than 13 local conferences have taken "low-altitude economy" as the focus of economic development in the next stage, and the Central Economic Work Conference has listed "low-altitude economy" as one of several strategic emerging industries.

On January 28, CCTV's "News Broadcast" launched a special report on "" Low Altitude and High Fly "Opens a Trillion-Dollar Industry New Track", believing that 2024 will be the first year when the domestic low-altitude economy begins to "take off.

in early January, Xiaopeng huitian, an aircraft subsidiary of Xiaopeng, officially unveiled its first land-air integrated concept flying car with a flying backpack at CES consumer show in the United States.

Under the heat, discussions on the pace of industrialization and commercialization of the low-altitude economy began to increase, and more voices questioned, "If you don't do a good job on the ground, you want to go to heaven?"

In this regard, some people in the aviation technology industry pointed out to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that the reason why the low-altitude economy has been focused on by all parties is that it is closely related to the current aircraft and automobile industry chain. China can also quickly form advantages in scale and industrialization through the accumulation of industrial chains in the fields of aircraft and automobiles, so as to achieve higher commercial value.

Highly integrated with the smart car industry chain

Multi-sensor fusion systems such as lidar, adaptive navigation and cruise systems, high-strength lightweight materials, and efficient thermal management systems... These once black technologies are now standard for a standard intelligent electric connected vehicle. Systems and materials.

however, after a little sorting, it is not difficult to find that many technical links in the intelligent automobile industry come from flight technology and flight materials. for example, lidar was first used in the flight control and fire control systems of aircraft, while navigation and cruise systems come entirely from space technology. even at present, many car companies' built-in navigation and map systems are supplied by military-civilian integration enterprises of the space science and technology system.

On the other hand, the efficient three-electric system, automatic driving system, multi-sensor fusion system and domain control system developed by the rise of new energy vehicles can also begin to feed back the endurance and intelligence of the aircraft.

"many people can't imagine that compared with traditional cars, eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft) has a simpler structure, lower integration cost and material cost. what is important is that the aircraft and the new energy automobile industry form a high degree of supply chain overlap, so it can quickly achieve low-altitude economic scale through fine-tuning the existing automobile industry chain." An aerospace science and technology related people in an interview with the 21st century economic report reporter pointed out.

"In terms of technical features, satellite navigation, autonomous driving, battery technology, laser sensors, and lightweight materials can all be used on top of eVTOL. Therefore, it is logical for automotive companies and supply chains to tentatively enter the low-altitude economy."

Compared with Xiaopeng, Geely Automobile planned to enter the "low-altitude economy" field earlier in 2017. Geely hatched Wofei Changkong's eVTOL product "AE200" was accepted by the Civil Aviation Administration in October 2022 and officially started airworthiness audit in 2023. During the same period, Wofei Changkong also disclosed the latest configuration of AE200 for airworthiness.

In fact, as early as 2021, in the United States, where low-altitude control is more "relaxed", Geely has obtained an airworthiness certificate issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) through the Taili Flying TF-1 hatched by its technology group.

As the low-altitude economy starts to become a hot word in early 2024, the focus on eVTOL in the capital circle has also reached the boiling point.

Shenwan Hongyuan Securities pointed out in a recent roadshow that the current eVTOL low-altitude economy with aircraft as the main carrier is booming, and it is expected to re-engrave the "humanoid robot" market.

The brokerage firm pointed out that eVTOL is currently in the early stages of industrialization, and there are a large number of entrepreneurial teams entering prototype research and development. At the same time, eVTOL and the automotive industry have supply chain reuse, three electric systems, rotor systems, flight control systems and new materials related costs can be quickly reduced.

China's accumulated technology and experience and industrial chain advantages in industries such as aircraft and new energy vehicles can be partially transferred to eVTOL. In particular, the trend of electrification and intelligence in the automotive field has enabled my country's accumulation in battery technology, advanced materials, autonomous driving, satellite communications and other fields to provide important support.

Beneficial industries cover all aspects

From the perspective of the industrial chain, in addition to the traditional industrial chain enterprises in the automotive industry by cutting into eVTOL, traditional military-civilian integration enterprises, drone research and development and production enterprises will also be the first to benefit.

A recent study by the China Business Industry Research Institute pointed out that, according to classification, the current low-altitude economic fields include low-altitude aircraft manufacturing, low-altitude infrastructure, low-altitude operation services, low-altitude flight support and other categories.

From the perspective of industry segmentation, low-altitude aircraft manufacturing also includes mainframe manufacturing, motors, power batteries, composite materials and structural parts, flight control chips, airborne equipment and sensors.

Among them, Dajiang and other unmanned aerial vehicles, eVTOL industry chain (host, flight control, sensing) representative enterprises, billion airlines, polar flight and other consumer unmanned aerial vehicle enterprises, by the capital market focus on. Traditional military-civilian integration technology companies such as CITIC Haizhi (000099.SZ) and China Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (688297.SH) are also considered to be able to make a difference in the vigorous development of the low-altitude economy.

In addition to the aircraft industry chain, the integration of the low-altitude economy and the traditional economy can also be one of the ways to reduce costs and increase efficiency for the aircraft industry and traditional industries.

Soochow Securities recently issued a research report and pointed out that in recent years, the low-altitude economy dominated by navigation and drones has developed rapidly. At present, the application scenarios that have been commercially explored include logistics, tourism, agriculture, fire protection, inspection, etc.

The research report stated that as the low-altitude economy has been upgraded to a national strategy, policies and industries are continuously promoting the implementation of "low-altitude economy" application scenarios. The application status of important scenarios such as tourism, logistics, urban management, and transportation is worthy of attention.

Among them, low-altitude tourism, as a more interesting and novel form, is expected to become a tourism and leisure project for tourists to experience and become the first application scenario to be implemented. Low-altitude logistics is currently the most widely used commercial scenario. Compared with traditional logistics distribution methods, unmanned logistics has the advantages of convenience and efficiency, saving labor costs, and reducing safety hazards, and the distribution efficiency is greatly improved.

In addition, the business model of low-altitude and urban management has been run through, and the air traffic that truly realizes "flying cars" has begun to gradually land, and the future space is vast.