EHang founder, chairman, and CEO Huazhi Hu has dismissed a negative critique of its prospects in the eVTOL aircraft market by short-seller Hindenburg Research as "false information." In a report published on November 7, Hindenburg accused EHang of misleadingly claiming to have preorders for more than 1,300 of its two-seat EH216-S autonomous eVTOL aircraft, insisting that 92 percent of these are "based on dead or abandoned deals, failed partnerships, and newly formed customer entities with no discernable operations." The report details a number of the sales agreements, including those signed with United Therapeutics and Indonesia's Prestige Aviation.
In response to questions from AIN, the Chinese company would not say who will be the first operators of the EH216-S. It did say that it expects the first commercial operations to be sightseeing flights for tourists that it will be operated either by EHang itself or by unspecified customers. EHang said that its “order pipeline” for series production now includes more than 100 aircraft, which suggests that the larger numbers of provisional sales have yet to be firmed up.
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