eVTOL Firm Zerog Secures Nearly 10M Yuan in Seed Financing

Zerog, a Chinese electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft developer, announced on Tuesday the official release of ZG-ONE, its first generation of eVTOL products for travel scenarios. The company also announced that it has obtained nearly 10 million yuan ($1.48 million) in seed round funding, sourced exclusively from BlueRun Ventures.

Based in Nanjing, Zerog was established in March of 2021. It focuses on the R&D and manufacturing of eVTOL aircraft. With the bold vision of building the third traffic ecology, the team is a startup enterprise that simultaneously researches and develops aircraft with three configurations: multi-rotor, composite wing and tilt rotor.

It has released ZG-ONE, the first generation of eVTOL aircraft made by the firm. This product is an intelligent electric manned aircraft with high cost performance and low cost. The ZG-ONE intelligent eVTOL aircraft adopts a six-axis and six-paddle configuration, weighs 650kg and can carry a load of two people. The standard version features three-degree flight control and a complete ejection umbrella, so as to ensure passengers enjoy a safe and comfortable riding experience.

This model is expected to be produced and delivered in small batches in the second half of this year. Besides low-altitude tourism, the ZG-ONE can be applied in multiple scenarios such as logistics, transportation, emergency rescue and geological surveys.

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Zerog is based in China’s Hefei High-Tech Zone, and plans to set up the first production line for its  first generation aircraft – the ZG-ONE – in July of this year. Scale production is expected to be made possible by that time. The company has already obtained several intended product orders.

In the future, Zerog aims to introduce the second-generation composite wing model, the ZG-VC2, and the third-generation tilt-rotor model, the ZG-T6, which can load six people. Tilt-rotor aircraft are recognized as the eVTOL aircraft configuration with the highest difficulties in terms of technical development, but they are also the comprehensive flight type with the highest efficiency.

Terry Zhu, Managing Partner of BlueRun Ventures China, said: “We can clearly see that the urban 3D transportation is ushering in a flourishing, and has reached a critical point of full-scale development. Today, eVTOL still has a technical threshold for the complexity. Zerog team has both full-stack technical capability required by the technology and engineering capability required by the product.”