China’s CATL pushed a little deeper into flying cars on Watch The Tax Collector OnlineAugust 3 when AutoFlight, a Shanghai-based electric aircraft startup, announced it will raise “several hundred million US dollars” in a fundraising round from the electric vehicle battery giant. CATL will take the slot of Team Global, a technology holding company founded by German-Polish entrepreneur Lukasz Gadowski and an existing and major investor of AutoFlight, making it the second biggest shareholder after Tian Yu, founder of the company, sources told Caixin. AutoFlight will jointly develop new batteries with CATL that will improve the flight range and safety of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL), according to an announcement on Chinese social media platform WeChat. CATL founder Robin Zeng told this year’s World Economic Forum in June that the company’s incoming condensed matter battery would be ready to enable a flight range of between 2,000 and 3,000 kilometers (1,243-1,864 miles) in the next few years. [AutoFlight announcement, Caixin, in Chinese]
