In 2024, low altitude economy and eVTOL have become hot topics in the venture capital circle.
This wave is like seeing the early stages of electric vehicles, with different eVTOL companies targeting different directions. Hard Krypton learned that Aerospace Era Feipeng Co., Ltd. from Kunshan has recently successfully completed the first domestic unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) cross sea air transport mission. The aircraft responsible for this cross sea mission is the FP-98 Leo, which is currently the world's largest commercial unmanned transport aircraft.
Aerospace Electronics (SH 600879), SF Express, and Guyu Capital are the investors behind Aerospace Feipeng. On April 24th, as soon as the news of the completion of the cross sea air transport mission by Aerospace Feipeng was announced, Aerospace Electronics, which indirectly holds shares, hit the daily limit up. Previously, the figure of Aerospace Feipeng often appeared on CCTV News.
Hard Krypton visited Aerospace Feipeng in April and revealed the mysterious drone manufacturer in the low altitude economy track.
In 2013, Amazon began drone delivery with a focus on the last mile; At the same time, a wave of drone entrepreneurship has begun in China, with consumer drone leader DJI Innovation and agricultural focused Jifei Technology starting their drone startups.
At that time, SF Express, a leading company in the domestic logistics industry, had already begun planning for the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs): large-scale manned transport planes for trunk lines, large-scale UAVs for branch lines, and small-scale UAVs at the end of the line.
Ten years later, in 2024, the domestic low altitude economy track has begun a new round of enthusiasm. Both manned drones and cargo carrying drones are in full swing.
In fact, drones with a range of 10 kilometers have already entered a white hot competition stage, which also indicates that the barriers to competition in this market are not as high. Because both giants such as SF Express and Meituan, as well as drone focused companies like DJI, Jifei, and other aircraft companies, have mature multi rotor models for 10 kilometer drones.
But as the range increased to 100 kilometers and 1000 kilometers, competition barriers began to emerge as drones grew larger.
At that time, SF Airlines, a subsidiary of SF Holding, was already the domestic cargo airline with the largest number of all cargo planes in operation. However, they still hoped to find a team in the market to develop large unmanned aerial vehicles and complete the replacement of unmanned aerial vehicles in regional logistics.
Liu Zefeng, CEO of Aerospace Feipeng, told Hard Krypton that this is why SF Express found Aerospace Ninth Institute (note: Aerospace Ninth Institute generally refers to China Aerospace Electronic Technology Research Institute, affiliated with China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation). Since 2005, the Ninth Academy has been developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), with navigation, control, remote sensing surveying, computer technology, and other technologies being its core. These technologies are precisely the key technologies for UAVs.
In November 2017, the two sides signed a cooperation agreement, with SF Express hoping to have a high-capacity and long-range unmanned transport aircraft, and the technical strength of the Ninth Academy fully meets their requirements.
Li Chun, a partner at Gu Yu Capital and the investor behind Aerospace Feipeng, recalled to Hard Krypton that from 2017 to 2018, the Ninth Academy team spent only 8 months transforming a manned aircraft into a drone and successfully flew it. This process proved the team's technical ability and execution capability.
Guyu Capital is a RMB institution established in 2011 with a management scale of 5 billion RMB. It has successfully invested in star projects such as SF Holding, Zhongji Xuchuang, and Jitu. Based on the ecosystem of the invested enterprises and considerations for the supply chain, Gu Yu, in collaboration with the Ninth Academy of Aerospace Science and Technology and SF Express, incubated the Aerospace Feipeng in 2020. Four years later, the concept of "low altitude economy" was first included in the government work report.
One detail is that the Ninth Academy team has designed an unmanned driving system for a mature transport aircraft based on its basic structure and power foundation platform.
In 2019, SF Express and China Aerospace Ninth Academy commercialized this project as a joint venture. Liu Zefeng said, "At that time, we hit it off right away. Developing large unmanned aerial vehicles required a lot of capital, and more importantly, institutional mechanisms. This led to the exploration of a model where central enterprises provided talent and technology, while private enterprises invested and invested in the market." Aerospace Feipeng landed in 2020 and became a mixed ownership enterprise.
Li Chun explained that within Guyu Capital, the positioning of the Aerospace Feipeng project is industrial mergers and acquisitions. The reason is that Gu Yu separated Aerospace Feipeng from the listed company Aerospace Electronics Group. The capital behind Aerospace Feipeng has changed to Guyu Capital, SF Group, and Aerospace Electronics.
At present, the FP-98 "Leo" unmanned transport aircraft of Aerospace Feipeng has been delivered for commercial use, with an external price of tens of millions of yuan; Its cargo weight is 1.5 tons and the maximum range is 1200 kilometers.
On April 18th, Zhang Yajun, Deputy Director of the East China Regional Administration of Civil Aviation, issued the FP-98 unmanned aerial vehicle system model certificate (TC) to Aerospace Feipeng; On April 24th, this FP-98 "Leo" unmanned aerial vehicle successfully completed its first cross sea air transport mission of shrimp fry. It is reported that Aerospace Feipeng has also reached a cooperation intention with relevant parties, planning to make this route (a low altitude unmanned aerial vehicle logistics cross sea transportation route in the Hainan Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area) a regular operation.
Commercial operation of a drone company
Unlike many drone manufacturers, Aerospace Feipeng is currently one of the few manufacturers in the field with a full aircraft layout.
Its products include the "Double Thousand, Double Hundred, Double Ten" series, corresponding to mainline, branch line, and terminal logistics respectively.
Firstly, "Double Thousand" refers to a flight radius of 1000 kilometers and a payload capacity of over 1 ton. Aerospace Feipeng has the FP-98 "Leo" (formerly known as FH-98), which is a large unmanned aerial vehicle with a payload capacity of 1.5 tons that cooperates with SF Express; The "Double Hundred" refers to a flight radius of 100 kilometers and a payload capacity of 100 kilograms. Aerospace Feipeng has a composite wing model FP-981C "Sagittarius"; Double Ten "refers to a multi rotor unmanned aerial vehicle FP-981A with a radius of 10 kilometers and a payload capacity of 10 kilograms.
Liu Zefeng revealed to Hard Krypton that the construction of the entire product system takes into account the coverage of civilian scenarios. The 100 kilometer flight radius product can cover the vast majority of distances between prefecture level cities in the province, while the 10 kilometer flight radius product mainly considers urban end logistics and county-level economy.
From a business model perspective, the future of drone companies is to provide systematic solutions. Liu Zefeng gave an example that Hikvision started with camera displays, but now it can provide security solutions for regions and cities; Huawei and ZTE's core is the terminal, but they can actually provide a complete set of communication solutions to operators, from tower construction, communication base stations, to home layout, etc.
Li Chun also believes that drone companies need to be good service providers, and in the future reasonable revenue structure of Aerospace Feipeng, the proportion of services needs to be greater. From the perspective of customer demand, in addition to directly purchasing various models and sizes of drone products, customers also have many operational needs in different scenarios, so operational capabilities are equally important
For example, when Aerospace Feipeng cooperated with Kunshan Fire Protection, it carried two fire extinguishers under the multi rotor aircraft.
In addition to FP-98, Feipeng also has a large hanging composite wing unmanned aerial vehicle product - FP-981C "Sagittarius", with a load capacity of 100 kilograms, which can be used in cross island mountainous transportation, disaster relief, coastal patrol and search and rescue fields.
Liu Zefeng stated that drones operate through programs, reducing the time for drivers to familiarize themselves with the instruments. Without the need for pilot training or flight experience, efficiency can be improved quickly. Especially in scenarios such as plateaus, Gobi deserts, and islands, it solves the problem of high land transportation costs,.
However, for commercial scenarios, currently relying solely on a drone equipment company cannot solve the problem, and various levels need to be made up for it. For example, if economic crops are transported from rural areas to cities by plane, large-scale centralized harvesting in towns and villages is first required, followed by drone transportation to reduce overall transportation costs.
With the maturity of future technology and regulatory policies, "perhaps unmanned aerial vehicles will have various players like cars and civil aviation aircraft. Drones will also have industries such as traffic lights, insurance, aircraft culture, training, and even building construction. At that time, people's consumption patterns will also change." Liu Zefeng said that of course, once the market operators mature, Feipeng will become an aircraft manufacturer like COMAC, and drones will become a huge industry like automobiles.
