On July 1, 2026, the newly revised Civil Aviation Law of the People's Republic of China officially took effect. The law comprises 16 chapters and 262 articles, adds a "Development Promotion" chapter for the first time, and writes in dedicated provisions on optimizing low-altitude airspace resource allocation and on airworthiness certification for unmanned aircraft. For the low-altitude economy supply chain, this is a clear signal: the regulatory framework is shifting from pilot-program authorization to a permanent institutional regime, and the legal foundation for volume production of aircraft has been laid. This article does not retell the airframers' story; instead, it turns the lens upstream — as OEMs begin preparing for production at the hundred-aircraft scale, whose orders come first?

I. Aircraft Certification Enters the Second Half: From "Can It Fly" to "Where Can It Sell"

Progress on the aircraft side over the past year or so can be sketched through three leading companies:

  • EHang: In March 2025, its operating subsidiaries Guangdong EHang General Aviation and Hefei Heyi Aviation received China's first batch of Operator Certificates (OC) for passenger-carrying civil unmanned aircraft. Combined with its earlier Type Certificate, Standard Airworthiness Certificate, and Production Certificate, EHang became the world's first passenger eVTOL company to hold all four certificates, running commercial passenger-carrying aerial sightseeing services in Guangzhou and Hefei. It delivered 221 aircraft in full-year 2025, comprising 215 EH216-series aircraft and 6 units of the new VT35 model (EH216-series deliveries were 216 in 2024).
  • AutoFlight: Its 2-ton-class cargo model V2000CG completed the full set of TC, PC, and AC certificates in July 2025 and was delivered to customers, becoming the world's first ton-class-plus eVTOL designed, manufactured, and delivered under civil aviation airworthiness procedures. In June 2026 it further obtained a Validation Type Certificate from Indonesia's civil aviation authority, making it the world's first eVTOL model to receive overseas airworthiness validation.
  • Aerofugia: Its AE200 was the first to enter Phase 4 (of five phases) in China's airworthiness certification process for transport-shuttle-class eVTOLs. In September 2025, the first production-configuration AE200-100 rolled off the line in Chengdu, and the company is targeting Type Certificate award in 2026.

In step with certification came a concentrated burst of overseas orders:

  • TCab Tech signed a purchase agreement with UAE-based Autocraft for 350 E20 aircraft worth US$1 billion, the industry's largest single order;
  • Volant Aerotech signed a three-party agreement with Thailand's Pan Pacific and AVIC International Engineering for 500 VE25-100 aircraft worth US$1.75 billion;
  • AutoFlight reached a purchase partnership with UAE's Falcon Aviation Services for 50 aircraft, comprising 15 cargo variants and 35 passenger variants;
  • XPeng AeroHT won an order for 600 flying cars in Dubai.

A necessary caveat: most of these overseas mega-orders are letters of intent or framework agreements, and delivery is conditional on certification progress. But for the upstream supply chain, the direction is already clear — OEMs are building capacity for scaled production, and procurement of components and materials is entering a volume-ramp cycle accordingly.

II. The Powertrain Trio: Motors, Motor Controllers, and High-Rate Batteries Are the Largest Incremental Procurement

An eVTOL's power system shares its roots with new energy vehicles, but the specifications are entirely different. Multirotor and tilt-rotor configurations typically carry 6 or more motors per aircraft, with requirements for high power density, lightweighting, and multiple redundancy — the failure of any single motor bears directly on safety certification clauses. This means it is not a simple transplant of automotive-grade motors, but a new product line that must go through airworthiness certification from scratch.

The industry's most noteworthy move came in June 2025: Wolong Electric Drive signed a joint venture agreement with Aerofugia to establish Zhejiang Longfei Electric Drive Technology Co., Ltd., focused on electric propulsion systems for airworthy aircraft with maximum takeoff weights between 750 kg and 5,700 kg, covering motors, drives, integrated solutions, and testing services. OEMs are locking in electric propulsion capacity through joint-venture binding rather than ordinary procurement — for every factory with automotive-grade electric drive capability, this is both a benchmark and a warning: fail to secure a slot in an OEM's system during the window, and getting in later will be hard. Per brokerage research estimates, cumulative domestic eVTOL demand will reach about 16,000 aircraft by 2030, corresponding to a motor market of over 50 billion yuan (forecast basis, not transacted figures).

Batteries are the highest-barrier link in the powertrain trio. An eVTOL requires its battery to sustain high-rate discharge even at low state of charge, to guarantee safe landing and go-around — an exam automotive batteries have never faced. Publicly disclosed progress includes:

  • CATL: AutoFlight's V2000CG carries its batteries; its first-generation condensed-matter battery has a self-reported energy density of 350 Wh/kg, and the second-generation 450 Wh/kg product is at A-sample stage with mass production expected in 2027 (company self-reported basis);
  • Zenergy: Its aviation battery has a self-reported energy density of 320 Wh/kg and meets 12C high-rate discharge at 20% state of charge, with aviation airworthiness certification underway (company self-reported basis);
  • Farasis Energy: Its semi-solid-state battery has a self-reported energy density of 330 Wh/kg and a cycle life exceeding 4,000 cycles, with samples already sent to leading low-altitude economy customers (company self-reported basis).

For upstream suppliers, airworthiness certification of aviation batteries pulls every supplier — cells, battery management systems, structural parts, connectors, thermal management — into the certification system. Once on a given aircraft model's qualified supplier list, the cost of replacement is extremely high, so the value of early positioning far exceeds that in the automotive market.

III. Aerospace-Grade Carbon Fiber Composites: Seventy Percent of an eVTOL's Structural Weight Is Composite

Pure-electric propulsion makes eVTOLs far more sensitive to weight reduction than fuel-burning aircraft. Public industry materials indicate that composites can account for 70% to 80% of an eVTOL's airframe structural weight, higher than conventional civil aircraft. Brokerage research estimates that domestic eVTOL carbon fiber demand will grow from roughly 500 tons in 2024 to nearly 12,000 tons in 2030 (forecast basis).

For China's domestic carbon fiber industry, this is another high-value outlet after wind power and pressure vessels, with factory opportunities at every link in the chain:

  • Precursor and carbon fiber: Weihai Guangwei Composites, Zhongfu Shenying, and Jilin Chemical Fiber all have product lines applicable to low-altitude aircraft;
  • Prepreg and fabrics: aerospace-grade prepreg imposes stringent requirements on resin systems and batch consistency, making it a value-concentrated link;
  • Structural part forming: compression molding, filament winding, and autoclave processes for fuselages, rotors, propellers, and landing gear fairings;
  • Supporting materials: adhesives, honeycomb and foam core materials, tooling and molds.

Note the dividing line between aerospace grade and industrial grade: airworthiness certification requires full traceability of material batch consistency and curing process parameters, and the certification threshold translates directly into a competitive moat. For small and mid-sized composite factories, the more realistic entry points are tooling and molds, interior parts, and non-load-bearing parts — get into the system first, then climb the grades.

IV. Avionics, Flight Control, and Vertiports: The Localization Gap and Visible Infrastructure Tenders

Flight control and avionics are the links with the lowest domestic localization rate in the eVTOL supply chain. The current landscape has established institutes and emerging companies running in parallel: beyond traditional forces such as AVIC's 618 Institute, companies including Aviage Systems, Boundary Intelligent Control, and Shiwei Intelligent are starting to win aircraft-model programs — Aviage Systems has supplied the flight control system for the demonstrator of Lanyi Aviation's LE200. As passenger models successively enter production certificate and operational review stages, demand for flight control, avionics, and battery management systems meeting high safety assurance levels (DAL-B/C) will be released in concentrated fashion. This link carries high unit prices and long certification cycles — the "slow but thick" business in the chain.

The ground side offers even stronger certainty, because it runs on government investment and open tenders:

  • Shenzhen: 249 low-altitude takeoff and landing facilities of various types already built; under the Shenzhen High-Quality Low-Altitude Infrastructure Development Plan (2024–2026), the 2026 target is over 1,200, with low-altitude facility investment for 2024–2026 expected to exceed 12 billion yuan;
  • Suzhou: 1 to 2 general aviation airports and over 200 vertical takeoff and landing points to be built by 2026;
  • Anhui: about 20 general aviation airports and about 500 temporary takeoff and landing sites and points to be built by 2027;
  • Wuxi: 200 takeoff and landing facilities of various types to be built by 2026.

A vertiport is not just a landing pad — it is a bundle of equipment procurement: high-power charging and energy replenishment equipment, hangars and lift platforms, weather observation, communication-navigation-surveillance equipment, approach lighting, perimeter security, and fire protection systems. For factories making charging modules, steel structures, mechanical and electrical installation, and security monitoring, this is the entrance in the low-altitude economy closest to the money with the gentlest barriers — just watch the tender announcements on each region's public resource trading platforms.

On the overall industry size, note a statistical-basis difference: CCID Research forecasts that China's low-altitude economy will exceed 1.06 trillion yuan in 2026, while another industry white paper, using a broader basis, puts the 2025 scale at already about 1.5 trillion yuan. The two figures use different statistical boundaries and should be cited separately.

V. Conclusion: An Order Map for Upstream Suppliers

Translating the industry's 2025–2026 changes into supply-chain language takes three sentences: airframers have moved from a certificate race to a capacity race; procurement has moved from small-batch prototyping to building qualified supplier systems; ground infrastructure has moved from planning documents to tender execution. For different types of upstream factories, the entry points differ:

  • Factories with automotive-grade powertrain and precision motor capabilities: watch OEM electric propulsion joint ventures and second-supplier onboarding windows;
  • Carbon fiber and composite processing factories: enter via non-load-bearing parts and tooling/molds, then climb the airworthiness grades step by step;
  • Wiring harness, connector, sensor, and precision structural part factories: track the supporting certifications for aviation batteries and avionics systems;
  • Mechanical and electrical installation, steel structure, charging equipment, and security factories: follow local vertiport tenders directly.

What makes this supply chain special: once on a given aircraft model's supplier list, order stickiness is extremely strong — but certification comes first and payment later, so positioning must begin one to two years ahead. On Tianxia Gongchang AI — Tianxia Gongchang (tianxiagongchang.com), a B2B platform covering 4.8 million Chinese factories — you can conversationally search its database of 4.8 million real, operating factories by category and region for the real factories along this industry chain.

Data Sources

All data in this article come from public channels: the Civil Aviation Administration of China's official website (effective-date information on the newly revised Civil Aviation Law); EHang's financial reports and media coverage by The Paper, Sina, and others (2025 delivery volume and Operator Certificate); AutoFlight's official website, 21st Century Business Herald, and Guancha (V2000CG's three airworthiness certificates and the Indonesian Validation Type Certificate); Cailian Press and China News Service (Aerofugia AE200 certification progress); Securities Times and 21st Century Business Herald (overseas orders of TCab Tech, Volant Aerotech, AutoFlight, and XPeng AeroHT); the Shenzhen Development and Reform Commission's Shenzhen High-Quality Low-Altitude Infrastructure Development Plan (2024–2026) and public plans of Suzhou, Anhui, Wuxi, and other local governments (takeoff and landing facility plans); and CCID Research and industry white papers (industry size forecasts). Statistical-basis handling: manufacturers' battery performance parameters are all company self-reported and not third-party verified; motor market size and carbon fiber demand are brokerage research forecasts; the total size of the low-altitude economy has differing statistical bases, each labeled in the text; overseas orders are mostly letters of intent or framework agreements, subject to signing announcements, and have not yet all converted into deliveries.