In 2026, a thought-provoking contrast has emerged in China's eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) industry: domestic policy density has peaked—the low-altitude economy has been written into the Government Work Report three times and included in the "15th Five-Year Plan," with six pilot cities delegating airspace management rights below 600 meters; yet leading companies are collectively going global, accumulating nearly a thousand overseas indicative orders within two years.
The two seem to move in the same direction but actually share the same root. Domestic policies address "industrial legitimacy" but have yet to resolve "commercial viability." EHang, the world's only passenger-carrying eVTOL company with all "four certificates," voluntarily withdrew its full-year revenue guidance in August 2026—completing only 17.3% of its annual target in the first half, while accounts receivable doubled over the same period.
What is being fought for in going global is not a cheaper market, but the right of market access: embedding into regulatory frameworks in advance within the time window before other countries complete their legislation. Orders are merely the surface; the right to participate in rule-making is the true target.
01 Domestic: Abundant Policies, Incomplete Closed Loop
Currently in China, low-altitude opening presents a "pilot-based and fragmented" pattern. Only a few pilot cities have opened specific routes, with cumbersome approvals and difficult cross-regional coordination. Without a stable supply of airspace, capacity planning and vertiport investments lack certainty.
257 prefecture-level and above cities have included the low-altitude economy in the "15th Five-Year Plan," compared to only 23 in the "14th Five-Year Plan." Taking the EH216-S as an example for breakdown: the unit price is over CNY 2 million, the battery lifespan is 800 to 1,000 charge-discharge cycles, and the battery replacement cost exceeds CNY 300,000. Under the most optimistic assumption of 5 flights per day, 250 effective flying days per year, and a ticket price of CNY 299, the annual revenue is about CNY 750,000; while the annual battery depreciation is about CNY 470,000 and maintenance is about CNY 120,000, not yet including insurance, personnel, and vertiport rent.
What is alarming is the payment collection: while revenue declines, accounts receivable double. The crux is not just "goods not delivered," but rather "goods delivered but money not collected." Anhui Province's 2026 plan has explicitly stated that "support must not exceed local financial capacity" and "commitments to underwrite aircraft purchases are prohibited." Fiscal backstops are narrowing.
02 Overseas: Three Types of Structural Advantages
Overseas customers of Chinese eVTOLs are almost entirely outside the traditional territory of aviation giants. Indonesia has over 17,000 islands, where sea transport is slow and air transport is expensive; the Middle East is widely covered by deserts, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company uses eVTOLs to replace helicopters for transporting materials to offshore platforms, reducing comprehensive costs by over 40%. The common feature is that the marginal cost of ground infrastructure is extremely high, while the low-altitude sector can directly cross geographical barriers—such demand is determined by geographical conditions rather than spawned by subsidies.
Pricing power is the second advantage. The unit price of Shidi Technology's E20 in the Middle East is about USD 2.8 million to USD 2.85 million, while overseas competitors of the same level are in the USD 4 million to USD 6 million range; domestic mainstream models are compressed to CNY 1.5 million to CNY 3 million, with the EH216-S quoted at CNY 2.39 million domestically and USD 410,000 overseas.
The most critical yet underestimated third factor is the institutional dividend. The eIPP plan implemented in the US in March 2026 covers 26 states. Its core is to open a compliant operation window parallel to the Type Certificate (TC) certification without breaking through the existing airworthiness system, allowing companies to conduct paid passenger operations before obtaining the certificate—and this plan involves zero federal funding. The UAE's RTC (Restricted Type Certificate) goes a step further, with the "restriction" mainly in geographical scope.
The difference lies in this: domestic subsidies are at the end of the chain, while overseas support is at the front end. The domestic prerequisite is "obtain approval first and then operate routinely," whereas overseas, they let you fly before you even cross the gate.
03 Going Global: Six Paths and Four Types of Assets
The tripartite agreement among Volante, Thailand's Pan Pacific, and China Aviation Engineering is a typical case of "package going global": 500 units, USD 1.75 billion, with China Aviation Engineering responsible for infrastructure. Huang Xiaofei calls it "deep operational cooperation." The customers' real concern is not the price, but having nowhere to fly and no one to repair after purchase.
EHang is exporting a "regulatory methodology," selling a replicable process of "how to make new aircraft operate legally in a host country." The Hanoi case is particularly typical: the project was established based on the local-level framework of Resolution No. 26/2026 of the Hanoi People's Council, including controlled test flights, and the co-construction of UTM (Unmanned Traffic Management) and OCC (Operations Control Center). Embedding UTM into the host country's urban infrastructure essentially exports the operational standards together.
AutoFlight takes the "cargo first, passenger later" approach. The V2000CG is the world's first ton-class or above eVTOL to obtain all three complete certificates from the CAAC (Civil Aviation Administration of China). It obtained the VTC (Validation Type Certificate) from the Indonesian Directorate General of Civil Aviation in June 2026, taking about 11 months, marking the first overseas VTC for an eVTOL; Fengyu Future proposes "engineers create customers," where the demand for "routine inspection of oil pipelines," which originally did not exist in the Middle East, was proposed and validated by the company. In addition, there are other forms such as capital going global, setting up overseas factories, and brand positioning.
The asset ranking is rules > data > delivery > mindshare. Orders will evaporate, and capacity can be replicated, but the certification logic written into other countries' regulations will not.
04 The Topography of Airworthiness Certification
The question "which countries are the easiest to get approval in" is inherently flawed. Airworthiness difficulty is not a national attribute, but a function of three variables: the existing certificate foundation, the intended operation type, and the aircraft configuration.
For eVTOL manufacturers that have already obtained a widely recognized home-country TC, the shortest path is not to re-certify, but to apply for equivalence acceptance in the importing country, namely the Validation Type Certificate (VTC). AutoFlight's Indonesian VTC took about 11 months, on the premise that the V2000CG had already obtained the CAAC's TC in March 2024; such countries are willing to conduct bilateral standard benchmarking rather than a full re-examination.
For those who have not yet obtained a full TC but wish to operate first, they can take the route of restricted or special category certificates, such as the UAE's RTC and Mexico's special airworthiness certificate. These countries grant limited operating rights, which is not equivalent to full commercial passenger qualifications, but is sufficient to support early validation and data accumulation. Further down are regulatory sandboxes (Thailand's CAAT, Hanoi in Vietnam, Hong Kong's "Regulatory Sandbox X"), which do not involve type certificates and only solve the right to test fly, yet they are the lowest-threshold entry method.
In terms of full TC speed, China's CAAC leads globally: the EH216-S took about 31 months from acceptance to certification, collecting all three certificates in less than three and a half years; the V2000CG took about 18 months; the cycle for passenger-carrying eVTOLs by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and EASA (European Union Aviation Safety Agency) is generally 4 to 6 years. But the price of speed is international acceptance: the CAAC's TC cannot automatically take effect in Europe and the US, and still requires equivalence assessment and supplementary tests. Moreover, for non-domestic enterprises, it adds supply chain reviews, data localization, and technology traceability thresholds. If the target is a full TC in Europe, the US, Japan, and South Korea, the difficulty is roughly EASA higher than the FAA, which is higher than Japan and South Korea.
There are two other legal shortcuts, but their vulnerabilities are also obvious. The first is the US Part 103 Ultralight Rules: those with an empty weight under 254 pounds, single-seat, and a speed within 55 knots are legally defined as "vehicles" rather than "aircraft," requiring no type certificate, airworthiness certificate, or pilot license; but this rule was formulated in 1982, limited to leisure and entertainment, and commercial use is illegal. Compliance entirely hinges on the 254-pound threshold—some manufacturers claim an empty weight of 253.5 pounds, with a margin of only half a pound. The second is the choice of configuration and scenario: cargo type is lower than passenger type, and unmanned is lower than manned.
05 Risk Boundaries
There is a huge conversion funnel between indicative orders and firm orders. Figures like 500, 350, and 600 units are mostly indicative purchases. Whether they can be converted into firm orders, and then into sustainable operational revenue, is the real test. And airworthiness mutual recognition has not yet been implemented: neither the FAA nor the EASA automatically accepts the CAAC's TC. Even within the framework of bilateral agreements, the scope of acceptance for new aircraft like eVTOLs is extremely limited.
The "top-heavy and bottom-light" nature of the industrial chain also constitutes a hard constraint. Among the over 400 exhibiting enterprises at the 2026 International Low-Altitude Economy Expo, about 40 are in complete machine manufacturing, about 60 in core systems, and over 150 in components and materials, while industrial software and testing services account for less than 30, only about 7%—the closer to the underlying level, the lower the degree of independent controllability. Industrial software has been embedded in the airworthiness evidence chain, not just as a design tool.
Another often underestimated risk is "falling empty on both ends." The hidden costs of going global are very high: the high temperature and sandstorms in the Middle East pose additional requirements for battery thermal management and rotor materials, and localized modification constitutes upfront expenditure; airworthiness, operation, and data compliance in various countries require separate investments. If domestic airspace reform accelerates from 2027 to 2028, while capacity and management resources have been locked by overseas orders, it may instead miss the main battlefield. The unit economic model has not yet been proven, which is a common challenge for the global industry.
Conclusion
First, the essence of this round of going global is "trading space for time." What is lacking domestically is not market demand, but the supply of market access. What companies exchange for are real operational data, compliance experience, and replicable cash flow; the data collected by Huitian in the UAE flowing back to China is a commercial reference sample.
Second, 2027 is the watershed. The "AAM Aircraft Type Certification Roadmap" of the five countries—the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand—sets the target for unifying certification standards in January 2027. Those who complete certification and run through operations before this node can solidify their first-mover advantage into a moat.
Third, the only thing worth investing in at all costs is the right to participate in standard-setting. The CAAC has signed airworthiness cooperation memoranda with Malaysia, the UAE, Kazakhstan, etc., and China's low-altitude standards have also entered the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) discussion framework—the value of these institutional pathways is higher than any single billion-dollar-level order.
Returning to the exhibition in Putrajaya, Malaysia, on October 9. What is truly worth paying attention to is not the E20 airframe on display, but the upcoming Southeast Asia business center to be established in Selangor. The "people" and "institutional interfaces" that a company reserves years in advance for a certain market are closer to the essence of competition than any current orders.