2024 Corporate Aviation Leadership Summit

Charles Alcock

News and developments about airplanes, helicopters and unmanned air vehicles used in all varieties of operations, including airlines, military, business, commercial, general aviation and private.

News and issues concerning the aviation charter and fractional-ownership industries and markets, including company announcements, regulations, new developments and labor issues.

News about bills, laws, regulations and other governmental decisions affecting aviation and aerospace. Topics include FAA re-authorizations, taxes on fuel and aviation activities, environmental legislation, ICAO decisions, governmental mediation of labor conflicts and World Trade Organization disputes and decisions.

Beijing-based consultant Louis Liu of DAP Technologies provides overview of China's eVTOL prospects

Lower Costs, Political Momentum Favor Chinese Advanced Air Mobility

News and developments about aircraft engines, including turbofan, turboprop, turboshaft and piston.

Issues regarding financing of aircraft; aviation insurance; tax issues for aircraft operators; new companies and people in the aviation financing and insurance industries.

The Chinese companies will work together to develop batteries supporting longer range and higher payloads for aircraft

Battery Group CATL Invests in AutoFlight's eVTOL Aircraft Plans

In March, Chinese officials approved the CarryAll autonomous freighter version

AutoFlight Begins Chinese Certification of Prosperity eVTOL Aircraft

China's air safety regulator issued a type certificate for the CarryAll aircraft on March 22

AutoFlight Delivers First Prosperity eVTOL and Certifies Freighter

AutoFlight on Tuesday demonstrated its five-seat Prosperity eVTOL with a 50-kilometer (31-mile) flight between the Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai. The flight across the Pearl River Delta took 20 minutes, compared with what the company said would have required a three-hour car journey due to local traffic.
The flight was conducted without a pilot on board, but the aircraft&nbsp;did carry four crash-test mannequins of a size and weight comparable to passengers.&nbsp;
According to AutoFlight, the Shenzhen-Zhuhai route is typical of the sort of connection that eVTOL air taxi services could make. Local regional government agencies have expressed support for the new mode of public transportation as part of a plan for a so-called “low-altitude economy” built around a network of potentially thousands of vertiports across the Greater Bay Area of southern China, which&nbsp;also includes Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangzhou. 
Several other eVTOL manufacturers, including EHang and Zhuhai, are seeking to get their products established in <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2023-07-25/shenzhens-baoan-district-bids-become-advanced-air-mobility-hub-china">China's Guangdong province</a>. The region’s population is around 86 million and the airspace borders several international airports.
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<figcaption>The Greater Bay Area in southern China is viewed as a likely early adopter of eVTOL air taxi services. (Image: AutoFlight)</figcaption>
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AutoFlight has logged around 10,000 flight hours with various iterations of the aircraft, which has a range of 250 kilometers (156 miles). These include the CarryAll freight-carrying version, which will be able to carry a 400-kilogram payload&nbsp;(880 pounds).
Recently, Chinese rotorcraft operator Heli-Eastern signed an agreement to acquire 100 of the <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2023-03-01/autoflight-claims-evtol-flight-distance-record-latest-prosperity-i">Prosperity aircraft</a>. It plans to use these for routes connecting points such as Shenzhen’s Shekou ferry port and the Jiuzhou ferry port in Zhuhai.
<h3 class="subheading">Commercial Service Starts with Freight as Safety Proving Ground</h3>
According to Federico Nordenstahl, AutoFlight’s CFO and managing director for Europe, the company has now conducted all the required tests to achieve type certification for the CarryAll aircraft with the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC). The company hopes to get this approval in the coming months so that it can start commercial cargo operations, to get the passenger-carrying Prosperity aircraft approved around 12 months later. It hopes&nbsp;to conduct as many as 300,000 autonomous cargo flights in the Greater Bay Area.
“Our aim is to show how early [freight] operations could be made uncrewed on preprogrammed missions with control station [staff] on the ground who could take over the controls,” Nordenstahl explained. “It is important to start with cargo to gain operational experience and demonstrate safety.”
As with the CAAC’s type certification of EHang’s EH216-S eVTOL vehicle in October 2023, AutoFlight expects the CarryAll, and later the Prosperity, to enter service in China with operational restrictions. For instance, it is unlikely to operate up to its full range in the early stages and early use cases could include express courier service deliveries.
Regardless, Nordenstahl said that the aircraft’s relatively long range for an eVTOL model with current battery technology is significant because it will support operational flexibility. The company says its performance is superior to that of rival lift-and-cruise eVTOL designs thanks to its fixed-wing architecture, 10 lift propellers, and three&nbsp;pushers. “The range matters in terms of unit economics because operators won’t need to stop [so often] to recharge the batteries and so there will be less unused time for the aircraft,” he explained to AIN.
AutoFlight has been working with partners&nbsp;to introduce more advanced batteries and expects to provide more details about these once it achieves initial type certification. Nordenstahl said that the company’s headquarters near Shanghai has the advantage of being close to multiple battery technology leaders.
<h3 class="subheading">Middle East Is the Next Target Market</h3>
Beyond China, <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2022-02-22/autoflight-promises-air-mobility-cost-revolution-its-prosperity-i-evtol">AutoFlight,</a> which has a European subsidiary in Germany, had planned to seek EASA type certification next. However, the company now views its next target markets as being in the Middle East, and it is in talks with aviation authorities in the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia.
Nordenstahl indicated that it is preparing to conduct demonstration flights in the UAE and Saudi Arabia later this year. AutoFlight is eager to tap the region’s apparent desire to be an early adopter of advanced air mobility as evidenced by Dubai’s recent agreement with U.S. eVTOL manufacturer Joby Aviation. It is in talks with prospective operators in the region for applications such as supporting offshore oil and gas platforms.
With production facilities already established in China, AutoFlight feels the lower manufacturing costs available in the country will give it an advantage over Western rivals. During the Paris Air Show in June 2023, company executives indicated to reporters that it expects the price tag for the Prosperity to be between $1.5 million and $2 million.

Managing Editor

AutoFlight's Prosperity eVTOL Aircraft Conducts Autonomous Flight Demo between Shenzen and Zhuhai

Autoflight, a Chinese start-up developing autonomous and electric aircraft for passengers and cargo, has secured a major order from Singapore-based fleet-management and air-transport company EvFly for 205 <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/aircraft-program/autoflight-evtol">Prosperity I</a> and Prosperity Cargo electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) aircraft, the company announced Thursday.&nbsp;
Expected to be delivered in 2025, the first 10 Prosperity aircraft will operate in Middle Eastern markets such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2022-08-25/evfly-shops-evtol-and-ectol-aircraft-support-asian-air-mobility-service">EvFly</a>—which&nbsp;plans to eventually deploy additional units in Asia and Africa—aims to operate both eVTOL aircraft and electric airplanes (also known as conventional-takeoff-and-landing aircraft, or eCTOLs) on those continents as well as in&nbsp;the Middle East. Last year, the company signed a letter of intent with French eVTOL developer <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2022-07-29/six-commercial-operators-commit-adding-atea-evtol-aircraft-fleets">Ascendance Flight Technologies</a> for up to 65 of its four-passenger Atea aircraft.
“This is a fantastic deal and illustrates just a few of the many geographies that will benefit from eVTOLs in both cargo and personal mobility,” AutoFlight president Omer Bar-Yohay said of the EvFly order. “The team at EvFly has a proven track record in successfully managing freight and cargo businesses, and we’re delighted to be partnering with them in what could be one of the first commercial eVTOL operations in the world.”
The news comes on the heels of AutoFlight’s recent announcement claiming that the company <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2023-03-01/autoflight-claims-evtol-flight-distance-record-latest-prosperity-i">set a new record</a> for the world’s longest flight by an eVTOL aircraft on a single charge. According to AutoFlight, its remotely piloted, fourth-generation Prosperity I eVTOL prototype flew 250.3 kilometers (156.4 miles) from its research and development site in southern Germany. The company has also conducted extensive flight testing with earlier prototypes in China, including hundreds of full transitions from vertical lift to cruise flight—something not many eVTOL developers have been able to achieve.&nbsp;
“AutoFlight has a proven aircraft, as demonstrated by their world-record flight and thousands of additional flight test miles,” said EvFly founder and CEO Yannick Erbs. “They are a natural choice for EvFly, as both parties will bring expertise to the nascent eVTOL cargo and passenger markets.”
AutoFlight’s Prosperity vehicles can be configured to carry either three passengers and one pilot, or about 900 pounds (400 kilograms) of cargo in an unpiloted, autonomous version. Eventually, the company hopes to offer fully autonomous passenger flights, too, but it will begin passenger operations with a safety pilot on board to oversee the highly automated operation of the aircraft.

Science & Technology Editor

Hanneke Weitering

EvFly Orders 205 AutoFlight eVTOL Aircraft for Passengers and Cargo

AutoFlight is claiming a world record for the longest flight by an eVTOL aircraft on a single electric charge. On March 2, the company reported that its latest Generation 4 prototype has flown 250.3&nbsp;kilometers&nbsp;(156.4&nbsp;miles), which is three kilometers longer than the distance covered by Joby Aviation’s prototype during a test flight in July 2021.
The Generation 4 flight took place at AutoFlight’s <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2022-01-18/chinas-autoflight-establishes-european-subsidiary-advance-evtol-plans">development site at Augsburg</a> in southern Germany on February 23. The latest prototype of the China-based group’s four-seat Prosperity I design was remotely piloted as it completed 20 circuits of a predefined flight track.
Back in July 2021, Joby flew its prototype&nbsp;154.6 miles (247.36 kilometers), taking one hour and 17 minutes to complete 11 laps of a predefined circuit. It conducted that flight&nbsp;at the company’s Electric Flight Base in Big Sur, California.
According to AutoFlight, to accurately track the distance flown by the <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/aircraft-program/autoflight-evtol">Prosperty I</a> aircraft, it installed two additional avionics systems provided by ForeFlight and Stratus GPS to run in tandem with its own cockpit suite. The company said it considers the flight a key milestone in its efforts to achieve EASA type certification in 2025&nbsp;and to prove the aircraft’s ability to operate commercially on sectors of up to 250 kilometers and at speeds above 200 km/h. 
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<h3 class="subheading">Multiple Transition Flights Achieved</h3>
During previous flight tests in China with earlier versions of the eVTOL design, AutoFlight says, it conducted hundreds of full transitions from vertical lift to horizontal cruise. Relatively few full-scale lift-and-cruise eVTOL prototypes have achieved this critical maneuver so far.
Design work for the Generation 4 aircraft has been led by automotive designer Frank Stephenson, who is known for his work on car brands such as Ferrari, Maserati, McLaren, and Mini. AutoFlight intends to manufacture the all-electric eVTOL vehicle in China at a <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2022-02-22/autoflight-promises-air-mobility-cost-revolution-its-prosperity-i-evtol">unit price of around $150,000</a>, which it says is far less than Western-made competitors' products would cost.
In October 2022, AutoFlight appointed a new <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2022-10-04/chinas-autoflight-appoints-us-leadership-team-prosperity-evtol-aircraft">U.S.-based leadership team </a>to achieve its objective of having the aircraft certified and ready&nbsp;to start commercial services in 2026. The company appointed Eviation Aircraft’s founder and former CEO, Omer Bar-Yohay, as its president. It also named&nbsp;Joby Aviation’s former head of business development, Chad Cashin, as its chief commercial officer.
“This flight is both a great celebratory milestone and a testament to the team’s incredible effort and progress in testing and incrementally pushing the aircraft’s performance envelope,” Bar-Yohay commented. “It’s a remarkable achievement that shows our aircraft’s capability, and we are excited to continue working towards our next goals all the way to EASA certification in 2025.”
At a U.S. base now under development at Napa County Airport in California, AutoFlight intends to expand the flight envelope for the current version of the Prosperity model later this year.&nbsp;The company’s expanded U.S. subsidiary is&nbsp;working alongside th<a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2022-01-18/chinas-autoflight-establishes-european-subsidiary-advance-evtol-plans">e design organization</a> it established earlier last year in Augsburg and its manufacturing hub near Shanghai.
Cashin told FutureFlight that the company may soon exploit opportunities to conduct additional flight tests in other locations. He said that it already has the manufacturing capacity to build 10 or more of the Generation 4 aircraft annually.
The Prosperity I design is not yet frozen and the aircraft being used for flight tests is not a conforming prototype. “There’s only so much one can learn from computer models for their aircraft and the key to any successful certification effort is flying the aircraft,” Cashin said. “AutoFlight is taking learnings from this generation of aircraft and quickly progressing towards the conforming prototype stage.”
This story was updated on March 2 to amend the reported flight duration of the AutoFlight prototype aircraft to 250.3 km.

AutoFlight Claims eVTOL Flight Distance Record with Latest Prosperity I Prototype

AutoFlight has appointed a new U.S.-based leadership team to oversee its plans to start deliveries of the four-seat <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/aircraft-program/autoflight-evtol">Prosperity I </a>eVTOL aircraft for commercial service in 2026. The Chinese company this week named Eviation Aircraft’s founder and former CEO, Omer Bar-Yohay, as its president. It also named&nbsp;Joby Aviation’s former head of business development, Chad Cashin, as its chief commercial officer.
At a new U.S. base at Napa County Airport in California, AutoFlight will expand the flight envelope for the current version of the Prosperity model as it works to freeze the design by the end of 2022.&nbsp;The company’s expanded U.S. subsidiary will now work alongside th<a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2022-01-18/chinas-autoflight-establishes-european-subsidiary-advance-evtol-plans">e design organization</a> it established earlier this year in Augsburg, Germany, and its manufacturing hub near Shanghai.
Bar-Yohay is a friend of advanced air mobility investor Lukasz Gadowski, whose Team Global group led a <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2021-11-22/autoflight-lands-100-million-investment-v1500m-passenger-evtol-vehicle">$100 million funding round </a>for AutoFlight in November 2021. The Germany-based technology entrepreneur has also invested in rival eVTOL developers Volocopter and Archer. 
According to Bar-Yohay, AutoFlight’s decision to appoint U.S.-based leadership reflected a need to pursue FAA type certification to access a major market for eVTOL aircraft, and also a desire to have a more prominent center of corporate gravity outside China. “This company is a black swan that no one has paid attention to,” he told FutureFlight. “In the past, I was a big critic of eVTOLs, and I still am because it’s a big challenge and it won’t work if they are only green, quiet, and safe. They have to make economic sense and that means reduced production costs as well. The vehicles need to hit all those markers and not just be a new version of a helicopter.”
According to AutoFlight’s new leader, the company will be far more competitive on production costs than Western rivals and already has “hundreds” of employees in China focused on the manufacturing process. He argued that the Prosperity I will also cost much less to operate due to its&nbsp;“simplicity of design, avoiding complex electro-mechanical devices like tilting wings or rotors.” 
Another competitive differentiator, Bar-Yohay claimed, is the degree of vertical integration at AutoFlight, which he said will own almost every part and system in the aircraft, with the exception of its avionics suite. “The more you own, the more you control your destiny on costs,” he said.
The company has previously indicated that the base price for the Prosperity I could be as low as $150,000, which is far lower than the price for most Western-made eVTOL designs. It claims that flights in the aircraft, with a range of 250 kilometers (155 miles), could cost no more than current ground-based taxi services.
The first Prosperity I test flights in the U.S. are expected to happen at the end of the first quarter of 2023, which is also when the company aims to submit its initial type certification application to EASA in Europe with a view to completing this process in 2025. AutoFlight intends to increase the production of prototypes to step up test and development work&nbsp;at all three of its locations, including in China's&nbsp;Jiangsu province&nbsp;where the first proof-of-concept aircraft started flying in October 2021.
In June, AutoFlight released <a href="https://youtu.be/z38zbkYCtJ4">a video</a> showing a new design with what it says is an improved lift and cruise configuration, optimized lifting propellers, and enhanced hover and cruise performance. It is one of a handful of companies, also including Joby and EHang, to have achieved full transitions from vertical to horizontal flight with a full-scale eVTOL aircraft. The company says it has made over 100 such flights so far this year.
Meanwhile, there are signs that AutoFlight’s business model may be shifting to one that is more focused on engaging with existing commercial aircraft operators. In a <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2022-02-22/autoflight-promises-air-mobility-cost-revolution-its-prosperity-i-evtol">February 2022 interview</a>, founder and CEO Tian Yu told FutureFlight that mainstream general aviation operators are “too small” to achieve the scale he envisages and that major airlines will have only a peripheral interest in eVTOL aircraft, which he said will never have the range to fit into their networks.
“We will now be talking to operators with significant fleets, including Part 135 or charter operators,” said Bar-Yohay. While he now “buys into” the urban air mobility market (UAM) vision, he indicated that he does not expect the sector to scale up as early and as quickly as some eVTOL rivals have suggested it will in their&nbsp;aggressive pitches to investors to go public.
“The way UAM will unfold is incrementally around current helicopter services and hub-and-spoke operations [to and from airports and other locations], but then the question is who picks up the scale to a different level,” he commented. “Maybe it could be an Uber-like player, creating a bubble for high-volume operations. This could start with a few hundred aircraft in the early years, and the toolbox is certainly full of the tools needed to build the system.”
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<figcaption>Chad Cashin (left) is chief commercial officer of AutoFlight, which is now led by Omer Bar-Yohay as president. (Image: AutoFlight)</figcaption>
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Chad Cashin, who is now leading AutoFlight’s commercial efforts, joined Joby almost three years ago when the company acquired Uber’s Elevate division. This division had been trying to establish a platform for on-demand eVTOL air taxi services.
Bar-Yohay co-founded Eviation Aircraft in 2015&nbsp;with Aviv Tzidon and left the company in February 2022 after a disagreement with its main shareholder, Clermont Group. Last week, Eviation achieved a long-awaited first flight with its Alice electric fixed-wing aircraft, which is now expected to be ready to start regional airline operations in 2027. He said that he still expects Eviation to succeed and remains a shareholder in the company.
AutoFlight, which also has plans for a family of <a href="https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2021-11-22/autoflight-lands-100-million-investment-v1500m-passenger-evtol-vehicle">cargo drones</a>,&nbsp;is close to completing another funding round, which Tian Yu has previously said would aim to raise another $200 million. Bar-Yohay indicated that further fundraising may well be required as the company approaches being ready to start serial production of the Prosperity I and, in his view, the source of this funding may well be driven by which markets prove most receptive to the aircraft and where it can find suitable partners.
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China's AutoFlight Appoints U.S. Leadership Team for Prosperity eVTOL Aircraft

AutoFlight expects to be ready for a public demonstration of the finalized design of its four-seat Prosperity I eVTOL aircraft by the end of 2022 as it works toward&nbsp;achieving type certification by 2025. The Chinese company believes it will enter the advanced air mobility (AAM) market with production and operating costs that will allow it to significantly undercut Western competitors.
Last month, the AutoFlight team achieved the first full transition between vertical and horizontal operations during flight testing of a proof-of-concept prototype that started in October 2021 in Jiansu province. It reached an altitude of 150 meters (492 feet) and a speed of 123 mph. The company expects to be ready to submit a type certification application in the first quarter of 2023.
Also, by the end of 2022, AutoFlight aims to start cargo delivery services with its V400 and V50 autonomous aircraft. According to founder and CEO Tian Yu, in a February 17 meeting officials with the certification department of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) were “very supportive” of proposals to start operations away from populous, congested areas. These revenue-generating services, flown under an experimental license, will assess use cases for the V400 Albatross and V50 White Shark, which have respective payloads of 100 kg (220 pounds) and 20 kg (44 pounds), and a range of 220 and 500 km (137 and 311 miles). 
AutoFlight started flying both drones in 2019 and says that the data logged with these similar designs have&nbsp;allowed it to make rapid progress in developing the Prosperity I. The all-electric aircraft, which was earlier designated as the V1500, is expected to have a range of 250 km (155 miles) and a cruise speed of 200 km/h (125 mph).&nbsp;
To further advance plans to bring the Prosperity I to market, AutoFlight is working on an autonomous freight-delivery version called the CarryAll, for which it aims to have frozen the design by the third quarter of this year with a goal of achieving certification by around August 2023. According to Tian, early&nbsp;uses for this vehicle could include connections to smaller cities in mountainous regions of Southwest China, where a 30-minute flight could replace a 10-hour drive.
At face value, what the Prosperity I promises to bring to market is fairly similar to what some other lift-and-cruise eVTOL designs offer. But what will likely get the attention of rivals is AutoFlight’s claim that it will be able to deliver this at as little as 10 percent of the cost of other aircraft, with anticipated list prices of just $150,000 compared with what it says is a more typical price of $1.5 million per unit.
Tian told FutureFlight that this advantage largely results from&nbsp;the well-established and highly competitive supply chain for electric vehicle manufacturing in the Shanghai area, where AutoFlight is headquartered. It has a production facility for electric propulsion&nbsp;systems in Kunshan near the city and also a composite manufacturing plant at Jining in Shandong province. 
According to Tian, a typical electric vehicle drivetrain produced in the Shanghai area now costs around $1,100, and the anticipated cost of each unit for the Prosperity I will be $1,500. He anticipates the price for the aircraft’s eight vertical-lift motor/propeller units and a pair of pusher propellers will be close to $15,000. On top of this, he estimates airframe production costs to be about $50,000 per aircraft and expects flight controls and avionics to add&nbsp;another $40,000.
While AutoFlight is channeling electric automotive technology, the company does have an aviation pedigree. In 1999, Tian founded Yuneec, which quickly established itself as a major manufacturer of radio-controlled model aircraft before expanding into the production of larger electric aircraft and drones, including the E430 electric ultralight two-seat model and the single-seat&nbsp;e-Spyder. 
In 2016, after selling his stake in Yuneec, he formed AutoFlight, with his main financial backer being the Team Global venture capital group founded by European technology investor Lukasz Gadowski, who has also invested in other eVTOL manufacturers, including Volocopter and Archer. Tian said AutoFlight could initially produce as many as 1,000 examples of the CarryAll vehicle each year and that its new factory in Shanghai will be able to produce at least 5,000 units per year before the Prosperity I itself enters service in around three years from now.
Earlier this year, the company established its AutoFlight Europe subsidiary at Augsburg in Germany, where it intends to conduct much of the development and certification work as it prepares for EASA certification of the aircraft. This operation is being led by former Airbus executive Mark Henning.
Tian estimates that operating costs for the Prosperity I could be as low as $50 per flight hour, with the cost of electricity for the batteries accounting for around $15 of this total. AutoFlight’s plan is that passenger services will begin with a “safety pilot” on board to oversee the highly automated operation of the aircraft. It envisages the aircraft operating from landing pads on no more than 20 by 20 meters of real estate (4,300 square feet) and making as many as seven flights each hour.
In Tian’s view, fulfilling the potential for eVTOL operations in urban areas will require “a change in mindset” on the part of the industry. “For urban air mobility, the aircraft won’t be flying at over 1,000 feet and so they will still get a signal from a 4G or 5G station and will be in-network all the time,” he maintained. Whether regulators will feel comfortable that ground-based telecommunications can provide sufficient safety redundancy remains to be seen.
AutoFlight’s intention is to be completely self-sufficient in all aspects of design and production. Its business plans for the operational phase are also vertically integrated, with the company aiming to provide passenger and cargo transportation as services, albeit with some type of collaboration with mobility providers. 
Significantly, Tian does not view existing aircraft operators as natural partners for AutoFlight’s advanced air mobility business model. He dismissed general aviation operators as “too small” to achieve the scale he envisages and feels that major airlines will have only a peripheral interest in eVTOL aircraft, which he said will never have the range to fit into their networks.
So, instead, AutoFlight aims to connect with companies like German car rental group Sixt and U.S. ride-hailing network Lyft. Tian feels it is companies like these that need to be the retail face of advanced air mobility and achieve the transformative economies of scale that he feels today’s aviation industry is incapable of supporting.
“We’re not like other companies,” said AutoFlight’s chief marketing officer, Jack Xu, echoing Tian’s lofty ambitions for a revolution in public air mobility. “We want to unlock the skies for everyone, not just rich people."&nbsp;
In fact, AutoFlight's approach seems to mirror that of China-based EHang, which appears to be getting close to certifying its autonomous EH216 two-seat eVTOL for the domestic market. It, too, has taken advantage of the CAAC's willingness to allow significant latitude for pre-certification flight operations that in some cases have involved carrying passengers.
In November 2021, AutoFlight completed a $100 million funding round. Tian said that a further round of funding could be concluded by the end of June to add up to another $200 million to its capital base.
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AutoFlight Promises an Air Mobility Cost Revolution with Its Prosperity I eVTOL Aircraft

Chinese eVTOL aircraft developer AutoFlight is establishing a European subsidiary to advance plans to achieve EASA type certification for its planned Prosperity I four-seater vehicle. The group’s new AutoFlight Europe operation is in&nbsp;Augsburg in southern Germany and is being led by former Airbus executive Mark Henning.
The Shanghai-based manufacturer is&nbsp;recruiting engineers for the research and development and certification center in Augsburg. It aims to have the aircraft—which will carry three passengers and a pilot on flights of up to around 155 miles—ready to start air taxi operations by 2025.
Last year, AutoFlight raised $100 million through a Series A investment round led by European technology investor Lukasz Gadowski and his Germany-based company, Team Global. In October 2021, it reported a first flight for a proof-of-concept version of the passenger-carrying eVTOL aircraft that it then called the V1500M.
The Chinese company is also developing smaller cargo-only, fully autonomous vehicles, including the V400 Albatross with a 220-pound payload and 130-mile range, and the V50 with a 44-pound payload and a range of up to 311 miles. In July 2021, the Civil Aviation Administration of China accepted AutoFlight’s application to certify the V400. In 2019 it unveiled a design for what appeared to be a two-seat V600 model that now seems to have been replaced by the larger eVTOL, which has now been rebranded as Prosperity I.
According to Autoflight, it has already logged more than 10,000 flights with these smaller autonomous drones. It said it expects to demonstrate the lift and cruise Prosperity I vehicle in “transition tests in a few weeks”—presumably a reference&nbsp;to flights involving a transition from hover to cruise phases. 
Henning has spent the past 26 years with the Airbus group and&nbsp;served as a program manager with Airbus Helicopters for the past 19 years, with responsibility for products such as the EC135 rotorcraft. Earlier in his career, he worked for Augsburg-based Daimler-Benz Aerospace (DASA), which subsequently became part of the EADS group that includes Airbus.
“We are bringing aircraft construction back to Augsburg, creating a high-tech location and jobs as we build drones and create a completely new market segment for air taxis,” Henning commented. “What I really like about AutoFlight and Prosperity I is the underlying simple concept. Simplicity translates into safety and efficiency.”
AutoFlight already has a composite materials manufacturing plant at Jining in China’s Shandong province. It has been conducting research into flight-control systems in Germany for some time, and its plans now appear to call for the new eVTOL model to be assembled&nbsp;in the country as well.
China-based EHang also has ambitions to certify its EH216 and VT-30 eVTOL aircraft in Europe. Meanwhile, Aerofugia, which is part of Chinese automotive group Geely, is working to bring Terrafugia's Transition flying car to market and also has a partnership with German eVTOL developer Volocopter.

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