CATL has spent three years preparing to sell batteries to aircraft. On 2 November it signed its first exclusive battery partnership on a named passenger eVTOL, the SKYLA V30 from Blue Vector Intelligent Technology in Hangzhou, and will develop a custom aviation pack for it as the only supplier.

The interesting part of that deal is not the battery. It is that a startup with no aircraft in service and RMB 400 million raised picked the world's biggest cell maker as its sole propulsion supplier. That tells you where the money is in electric aviation. It is not in the cell, and it is barely in the watt-hours per kilogram. It is in the certificate.

The aircraft

SKYLA V30
Type All-electric tiltrotor, manned, low-altitude intercity transport
Seats 6
Class 2.5-ton (IT之家's figure; Gasgoo describes a two-ton class)
Range 260 km
Max cruise 320 km/h
Demonstrator A/C01, rolled out 31 Aug 2026 in Harbin, Heilongjiang

Those numbers explain why the battery is the hard part. A tiltrotor has to hover, which is a large power spike at low altitude, then cruise at 320 km/h, which is a long, efficient discharge. Put six seats and their occupants inside 2.5 tonnes and every kilogram of cell is a kilogram taken out of payload or range. 260 km is a regional hop, and the economics of a regional hop are a different business from an autonomous air taxi.

Blue Vector says it plainly in the signing release: for eVTOL, the power battery system directly determines aircraft weight, range, flight performance and operational safety, and the technology has to keep passing system integration, engineering validation and airworthiness certification.

What was signed, and what was not

Signed on 2 November: strategic and product cooperation agreements, CATL named exclusive battery partner, a custom aviation battery for the V30, and joint work on technology development, research coordination, standards, market expansion and operational applications. The ceremony was in Hangzhou, with Blue Vector founder and CEO 吴穹 and CATL chairman and CEO 曾毓群 in the room, and the documents signed by Blue Vector co-founder and COO 张栩 and CATL's aviation business executive president 胡文斌.

Not published: the contract value, the cell chemistry, the pack capacity, the energy density, the price and the delivery date. Every one of those is a number an aviation programme needs before anyone can price a flight.

The standards work deserves attention too. Whoever writes the specification sets the bar for everyone else, including the certification test regime. That is the actual prize in this deal.

CATL's aviation resume is long

CATL and Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, the state-owned airliner maker, formed a joint venture in July 2023 for civil electric manned aircraft. In April 2023 CATL unveiled its Condensed Battery at the Shanghai auto show, up to 500Wh/kg in a single cell, and chief scientist 吴凯 said the programme was applying aviation-grade standards throughout. By June 2024 chairman 曾毓群 said CATL had test-flown a 4-ton civil electric aircraft and expected to release an 8-ton aircraft in 2027 to 2028 with a range of 2,000 to 3,000 km.

In August 2024 CATL became a strategic investor in Shanghai's Autoflight, committing hundreds of millions of dollars exclusively, to co-develop eVTOL batteries. Autoflight has since run up 2,000 aircraft of cumulative commercial orders and, in November 2025, unveiled a battery-powered floating vertiport with CATL that puts a takeoff platform, storage and charging on a vessel.

Then came the hard part, in August 2026. CATL said its 350Wh/kg prismatic aviation battery system had passed a verification test showing no thermal propagation when two adjacent cells were triggered simultaneously, including cells at the middle and the corners of the pack. CATL called it the world's first aviation battery system using prismatic cells at that energy density to clear such a test. Production, inspection and testing were witnessed by designated representatives of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the system was declared ready for mass production, and the first customer is Autoflight's passenger eVTOL.

That CAAC witness is the whole difference between a car pack and an aircraft pack. Triggering one cell and showing no propagation is the industry norm. Triggering two adjacent ones at once is the hard version.

The rival that got there first, differently

CATL is not the first Chinese cell maker into aviation. In March 2026 CALB (中创新航) started mass production of aviation-grade batteries at its Chengdu plant for Xpeng's flying-car unit Aridge, for the modular Land Aircraft Carrier, codenamed X3-F. CALB says its high-silicon, high-nickel cells reach up to 360Wh/kg with a maximum discharge rate of 25C, that the pack did not catch fire, explode or leak in a 15.2-metre drop test, and that more than 100,000 cells have been cumulatively verified against automotive rules and aviation airworthiness requirements. Aridge plans mass production and delivery within 2026 at a price not exceeding ¥2 million.

Look at the density: 360Wh/kg against CATL's 350Wh/kg. CALB has the higher number and the earlier production line. What CATL has is a regulator in the room for a safety test and an exclusive supply line on the V30. Density was never going to be the axis here. A tiltrotor doing 260 km at 320 km/h needs a pack that survives airworthiness review, and the pack that survives airworthiness review is the one that flies.

For scale, CATL held 39.1% of the global EV battery market in January to September 2026 with 389.2GWh installed, and the seven Chinese makers in the global top ten took 73% between them. East Asia Brief's read is that LG Energy Solution and Samsung SDI have stayed on automotive modules and grid storage and have not qualified commercial cell platforms for passenger aircraft, with their aerospace work aimed at long-term solid-state programmes.

The order book is not a certificate

Blue Vector's A/C01 demonstrator rolled out in Harbin on 31 August and is now in systems integration, ground testing and tilt-transition flight tests. East Asia Brief reports the flight test programme running to 30 June 2027. None of that is airworthiness certification, and Blue Vector's own pre-sales are an order book, not a type certificate. More than 100 aircraft have been pre-sold since the model's global debut in July, including 60 signed at the Global Digital Trade Expo in Hangzhou on 24 September, 30 of them for Singapore's Moon Aero, the first overseas commitment. The startup has raised roughly RMB 200 million in the past two months, and more than RMB 400 million across five rounds in about six months, with the most recent led by Shenzhen Capital Group.

The checklist for anyone claiming flying taxis are imminent: a CAAC type certificate for the V30, the flight test milestone, the energy density and capacity of the actual pack, a serial delivery date, and a fare. So far the industry has pre-sales, demonstrations and partnerships, plus one cell maker whose safety test a regulator watched.

The line to keep an eye on is CATL's 8-ton aircraft with COMAC, due 2027 to 2028 and aimed at 2,000 to 3,000 km of range. That is the real prize. A 260 km tiltrotor with six seats is a demonstration of a supply chain; a 3,000 km electric airliner is a different product.

The verdict

CATL owns the propulsion supply line of a passenger-aircraft programme and is co-writing the rules that programme will be judged by. In a market where the binding constraint is paperwork rather than chemistry, that is a strong position.

None of it puts a passenger in the air. Blue Vector's aircraft has a demonstrator that has not yet flown, a certification campaign that has not begun, and pre-sale commitments from operators rather than airlines with firm orders. Read this as CATL buying the certification clock, not as electric flight arriving next year.

If you only track one number in this sector for the next eighteen months, make it the type certificate.

Sources