On April 1, CCID Consulting Intelligent Equipment Industry Research Center released the “Research Report on China’s Low-Altitude Economic Development (2024)” (hereinafter referred to as the “Report”) in Beijing. The report shows that in 2023, the scale of China’s low-altitude economy will reach 505.95 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 33.8%. With the increasing number of low-altitude flight activities and the gradual emergence of low-altitude infrastructure investment, it is optimistic that the scale of low-altitude economy is expected to exceed one trillion yuan by 2026.
Yang Ling, head of the intelligent equipment industry Research center of CCID Consulting, said that low-altitude economy mainly includes four links: low-altitude infrastructure, low-altitude aircraft manufacturing, low-altitude operation services and low-altitude flight support. In 2023, the contribution of low-altitude economic scale to low-altitude aircraft manufacturing and low-altitude operation services is the largest contribution, nearly 55%, and the contribution of indirect economic activities around supply chain, production services, consumption, transportation and other economic activities is close to 40%. In addition, with the increasing number of low-altitude flight activities, the effect of low-altitude infrastructure investment has gradually emerged.
Focusing on the forefront of the low-altitude economy, the report shows that in the field of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL), the scale of China’s eVTOL industry in 2023 reached 980 million yuan, an increase of 77.3%, and is expected to reach 9.5 billion yuan by 2026.
In addition, the report believes that civilian drones have become the main model of China’s low-altitude economic development, in 2023, China’s civilian drone industry scale reached 117.43 billion yuan, an increase of 32%; The application depth and breadth of industrial drones in emergency support, energy inspection, agriculture and forestry plant protection and other scenarios have been continuously improved, and the industry scale has reached 76.68 billion yuan.
It is worth mentioning that the current low-altitude economic policies are frequently favorable. This year’s government work report proposed to actively build new growth engines such as bio-manufacturing, commercial aerospace, and low-altitude economy. Many provinces and cities such as Guangdong, Anhui, Zhejiang, Shandong, Shaanxi and Chongqing have clearly accelerated the development of low-altitude economy, and many localities have successively introduced low-altitude economy-related plans or supporting policies.
“Low altitude factor, factor scene, scene economy is the essence of the current development of low altitude economy.” Yang Ling said, first, speed up the construction of low-altitude infrastructure, low-altitude airspace resources into production factors similar to “land” resources, to provide factor guarantee for economic activities; The second is to coordinate the five elements of airspace, market, technology, policy and security, and constantly explore and promote application scenarios; The third is to tap the real demand, form scale effects, smooth business models, so as to shape the low-altitude economy into a sustainable economic growth engine.