According to recent report from China Star Market Daily, the Greater Bay Area is rapidly becoming one of the centers for the development of the drone industry.
At the 15th Airshow in Zhuhai, a new Low-Altitude Economy Pavilion was established for the first time, with hundreds of companies including Yunzhou Tech, COSIC, XPENG AEROHT, and United Aircraft participating in the exhibition.
The Greater Bay Area has become an important highland for China's civilian drone industry. In terms of low-altitude flying vehicles, Guangdong has a mature drone industry chain, with consumer drones accounting for 95% of the national market and 70% of the global market; industrial drones account for 54% of the national market and 40% of the global market.
Guangdong is forming a low-altitude economy industry with the linkage of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Zhuhai.
Among them, Guangzhou, relying on its solid foundation in the automotive manufacturing industry, has a complete supporting system in the research and development, design, parts manufacturing, application, and service of flying cars, attracting leading enterprises such as XPENG AEROHT and EHang to settle.
Since the beginning of this year, companies like XPENG AEROHT and GAC Group have accelerated the development, testing, and certification process of flying car products. In March, GAC's first flying car, GOVE, conducted a flight verification in Guangzhou.
In September, XPENG AEROHT's "Ground Aircraft Carrier" made its debut in the Guangzhou Development Zone and Huangpu District. The "Ground Aircraft Carrier" consists of a new energy vehicle (land body) and a flying body, which can be "recovered" into the vehicle's rear trunk and charged simultaneously. On October 27th, the XPENG AEROHT flying car smart manufacturing base officially started construction in the Guangzhou Development Zone and Huangpu District. It is reported that this is the world's first flying car factory using a modern assembly line for large-scale mass production, which will be used to produce the flying body part of the split-body flying car "Ground Aircraft Carrier," with a planned annual capacity of 10,000 units.
According to industry insiders, about 80% of the parts of flying cars overlap with electric vehicles, and the remaining 20% are related to aviation. Guangzhou has always been the top city for automobiles in China. In 2023, Guangzhou's automobile production reached 3.18 million vehicles, ranking first in the country for five consecutive years. Among them, GAC Group has brands such as GAC Honda, GAC Toyota, and GAC Aion, with production gradually increasing over the past decade. In 2013, GAC Group's overall production exceeded 1 million vehicles, and then exceeded 2 million vehicles in 2017. XPENG AEROHT's supply chain is 70% in the Pearl River Delta.
Data shows that Guangzhou currently has more than 300 enterprises related to the low-altitude economy, including 69 core enterprises. This year, Guangzhou has continued to promote legislation for the development of the low-altitude economy industry and infrastructure around drone delivery and flying cars.
Shenzhen's annual output value of the low-altitude economy has exceeded 90 billion yuan. As of the first half of 2024, Shenzhen has opened more than 205 drone routes and built 126 drone take-off and landing points. Shenzhen is particularly prominent in light and small multi-rotor drones, with a complete industry chain that integrates technology research and development, mold manufacturing, airworthiness testing, and product manufacturing, gathering industry leaders such as DJI Innovation and SF Phoenix Wings. Huaqi Tiancheng launched the industry-level drone RT100, which uses a four-axis octocopter layout, pure electric power, a wheelbase of 2000mm, a maximum load of 50kg, a maximum endurance of up to 40 minutes, and supports a variety of rich load equipment; at the same time, it is equipped with an industrial-grade flight control system, which has certain flight performance.
In addition to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Zhuhai, as the host city of the China Airshow, also has a relatively mature low-altitude economy industry foundation. Its drone and general aviation industry chains have formed a gathering advantage and are among the top in the country in terms of whole machine development capabilities. It is estimated that Zhuhai has gathered more than 40 upstream and downstream enterprises in the fields of drone aircraft, radar systems, flight control and navigation systems, chip battery components, etc.
In May of this year, the General Office of the People's Government of Guangdong Province issued the "Guangdong Province Action Plan for Promoting High-Quality Development of the Low-Altitude Economy (2024-2026)", proposing that by 2026, the scale of the low-altitude economy will exceed 300 billion yuan, and a low-altitude economy industry pattern with three cores (Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai) linked, multi-point support, and piecemeal development will be basically formed, cultivating a number of leading enterprises and specialized and new enterprises, with a steady increase in industry scale.
At the financial level, Guangdong Province is also making efforts. In July this year, Guangzhou released the first 10 billion yuan industrial investment fund with low-altitude economy as the main investment direction. This month, Shenzhen and Zhuhai have successively released low-altitude economy industry funds with a total scale of 2 billion yuan and 10 billion yuan, respectively, providing financial security for the development of the low-altitude economy.
