Huaxiang Xu
[Foreign Language] Thank you, Mr. Hu. Hello, everyone. I'm Edward Xu, Chief Strategy Officer of EHang. First, I'm glad to help translate the CEO's remarks into English.
[Interpreted] Hello, everyone. Thank you all for joining our earnings conference call today. I would like to start by sharing with you our business progress for the first half of 2021. Then I will give you some highlights on our business plans for the second half. As I shared with you in our last quarterly earnings call, EHang has leveled away UAM operation with the aim to become an urban air mobility platform operator, empowered by our autonomous aerial vehicles. To achieve this exciting goal, we have made relentless efforts and careful preparations in the past few months.
As you know, we newly released our VT-30 passenger-grade AAV as one of our flagship product besides the EHang 216. The release of the VT-30 fully demonstrated our technological strength in the field of AAV industry, and it is also complementary to the EHang 216, which is designed for short to medium range intra-city air mobility. Our priority is to launch intra-city air mobility first, with application of EHang 216 to make urban air taxi a reality. I believe many of you know that we have made quite a number of trial flights carrying passengers and cargoes during recent years.
There are still people looking forward to taking a ride with our EHang 216 for flight experience. But I think what EHang has done essentially in the past few years is not only to build AAVs, but to build safety. Over the years, we have been making trial flights with good safety record. Meanwhile, we have accumulated abundant experiences and also products that may help us think seriously for further improvement, which we have been working on recently. To ensure top safety record in the upcoming operations of our AAVs after the formulation of airway solution standards and completion of the certification process, we have been making comprehensive progressions from various perspectives.
In terms of sales, we delivered 18 units of EHang 216 AAVs in the first half of 2021, including 15 units in the first quarter and 3 units in the second quarter. As we mentioned in our last earnings conference call, EHang is gradually transitioning into an operation platform model from a product sales-centric model, which is also reflected in our actual AAV sales performance. Next, I'm glad to share with you the progress of our 100 Air Mobility Routes Initiative. As of now, we have screened and tested 7 operation spots, most of which are located in South China, in addition to the ones that are operated by our partners.
We position our operations as new transportation mode for island hopping, low altitude aerial tourism and suburban transportation. We started by focusing on South China and the plan to expand gradually to other areas in China. So far, we have targeted 15 self-run operation spots, 6 are in Guangdong province and another 6 in the Yangtze River Delta region. We also plan to assist our customers to conduct operations in additional 21 locations. Meanwhile, our collaboration with CAAC for EHang 216 Type Certification is going on very well. CAAC has officially accepted our application on January 19, 2021. It has spearheaded the project team by recruiting over 20 experts from the country to start the certification process.
We have held several rounds of review meetings and inspections in Guangzhou and Hezhou. Critical consensus has been reached between the expert team at EHang on the basis of complete understanding of the design features of EHang 216. Now the Type Certification process are proceeding in an orderly manner in accordance as planned. We have taken the EHang 216 Type Certification program as the company's top priority. We expect to work with the CAAC to formulate airworth as a certification standard for the EHang 216 passenger-grade AAVs in the third quarter of this year, which will be unprecedented in the aviation industry.
In addition, we expect to obtain the Type Certificate for EHang 216 within the next 4 to 6 months. We will strive to complete all the relevant certification and inspection work ahead of schedule within this year. In terms of new products, we have released our brand-new type of hybrid eVTOL, the VT-30, in May of this year, which is designed for longer-range urban air mobility. VT-30 is designed to travel a distance of up to 300 kilometers with a designed flight time of up to 100 minutes.
This complements to the existing EHang 216, a product focusing on short to medium business intra-city air mobility. Currently, VT-30 is undergoing a large number of internal travel flights and has made good progress. Our EHang 216F, the firefighting model, and other auxiliary products have filled the gap in urban high-rise firefighting. In January of 2021, we successfully completed the technical examination of the EHang 216F by the China National Fire-Fighting Equipment Quality Supervision Testing Center, which certified the reliability of our products aspired by the equipment and paved the way for the commercialization of the EHang 216F AAV.
Subsequently, we will start to promote, sign and deliver the EHang 216F related orders. With so many technical advantages, we believe it will play an important role in the real scenarios of firefighting, rescue and emergency activities in various places. With our new production facility in Yunfu, Guangdong officially put into operation in June of 2021, our production capacity has been increased. The facility is mainly used for the production of the EHang 216 service of passenger-grade AAVs and others.
Phase 1 covers a gross floor area of 24,000 square meters and has designed the initial annual capacity of about 600 units. Although the Investor Day, which was scheduled to be held at the new Yunfu production facility on August 18 has been unexpectedly called off by the local government right before the event due to the reemergence of the COVID-19 cases in Guangdong, we still hope to reschedule the event after the lift of traveling ban. We will then expect to provide investors with opportunities for in-person visits and communications.
In the first half of the year, we continue to carry out a large number of trial flights, which are in line with the CAAC's regulatory methods to encourage trial flights first and integrate the trial operation experiences into the certification process. For example, we made a trial and demo flight at the opening ceremony of the Chinese Super League in Guangzhou and the Digital China Summit in Fuzhou, in Japan and in Beijing for the first time and over South China Sea from Zhuhai Hengqin to Dong Ao Island, et cetera.
In June, we participated in the anti-COVID-19 campaign in Guangzhou by transporting medical and emergency supplies to quarantined areas using the EHang 216 and EHang 216L AAVs. In Europe, we have successfully been selected and deeply involved in a large number of urban air mobility projects supported by the European Union and have reached extensive industry collaborations with the government and partners in Spain, France, Italy and other countries. Looking forward to the second half of the year, we expect to continue to sell and deliver our service of AAV products. During the strategic transition of our business model, we have also maintained a sufficient cash reserves for at least 12 to 24 months to support the smooth progress of our business development in the future.
Although the transition may lead to a potential decline in the short-term sales revenues, we will continue to vigorously advance the preparations and the gradual implementation of our 100 Air Mobility Routes Initiative, which we view as more important through continuously expanding our operation spots and routes, increasing the frequencies of trial flights, expanding the existing professional air mobility operation team so as to create income from our operations and make it eventually become our main pillar of revenue soon and to enable EHang to be the world's first company to start the commercialization of urban air mobility operations.
And last, I would like to say that EHang will move step-by-step towards our strategic goal of becoming an urban air mobility platform operator. Meanwhile, we are very pleased to see that more and more upstream and downstream companies are joining the emerging UAM industry. We are confident that EHang will continue to lead the way and maintain our comprehensive competitiveness in the global UAM market. Thank you for all our investor support.
Those were Mr. Hu's remarks. Following his remark, I'm going to elaborate on our strategic transitioning in the first 2 quarters and our plan for the future. As we have defined our goal as to build an advanced global UAM operation platform, we have switched our focus more towards AAV operations in second quarter of 2021, which led to a scale down in our sales level. Moreover, the reattack by COVID-19 in South China had adverse impact on the sales and the deliveries of our AAVs in the period as well.
On the other hand, we started to explore the field of practical UAM operations. Specifically, we built our UAM operation team by recruiting industry professionals from world-class organizations. We believe we are able to leverage their valuable experiences and backgrounds in leading aviation and mobility companies such as Airbus, Hainan Airlines, Hong Kong Express, Hong Kong Airlines, CITIC Helicopter, BMW, IBM, et cetera, and to build a whole new operation platform for AAVs, one we call UAM 3.0.
More importantly, we have started to implement our 100 Routes Initiative by screening and testing appropriate sports for UAM routes. So far, we have screened and tested 7 spots for AAV operations, most located in South China. We position our operations to offer a new transportation mode for island hopping, low altitude aerial tourism and suburban transportation. Our initial focus is on the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and a plan to expand gradually to other areas in China.
Based upon our latest operation plan, we have targeted 15 self-run operation spots, including 6 in Guangdong and 6 in Eastern China. We're also planning to help our customers to launch operations in 21 spots, including 10 in Guangdong and 4 in Guangxi. In achieving our operational goals, we are working broadly with our local partners, including government authorities and business organizations from industries such as real estate, tourism, construction, transportation and aviation who are able to share their valuable resources, especially in island and in land and infrastructure.
Our goal is to build a moat to give us first-mover advantage in the UAM industry. Meanwhile, our cooperation with the Civil Aviation Administration of China for EHang 216 Type Certification is going on very well. The CAAC has officially accepted our application on January 19, 2021. It has set up a project team by recruiting over 20 experts nationwide to start the certification process. We have held several rounds of meetings and inspections to conduct airworthiness reviews of the design, safety and operations of our EHang 216 AAV. We are hopeful that the further reviews and tests will be completed in the next 4 to 6 months when the Type Certification for EHang 216 could be granted by CAAC, which shall pave the way for large scale operations of our AAVs.
Looking ahead, we will continue to implement our 100 Urban Air Mobility Routes Initiative by accelerate the testing process. We will strengthen our existing partnerships with key entities, including CAAC, local government and business organizations. We expect to acquire new resources by demonstrating our successful models, which should further expand our operational scale. Meanwhile, we will also actively look for various business opportunities to better monetize our model at this stage. By generating ancillary revenues from advertisement, static displaying of AAVs, student camps, training schools, wedding shows, et cetera.
I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Mr. Richard Liu, to provide the financial results. Richard, please go ahead. Thank you.