Carbon vs Glass Fiber for eVTOL and Drones: China Market Research 2026

1. Low-altitude economy: China certifies first, Europe consolidates

The policy signal in China is settled. The low-altitude economy entered the Government Work Report in March 2024 as a new growth engine, the National Development and Reform Commission created a Low-Altitude Economy Department in December 2024, the 2026 Government Work Report calls it an emerging pillar industry, and two mandatory national drone standards including real-name registration took effect on 1 May 2026 [S14]. Certification is where China moved first, and it is the single most important fact for material suppliers: the first certified programs fix the material specifications that later orders must follow.

Drones, not passenger aircraft, remain the only segment at industrial scale. Registered drones reached 3.287 million at end-2025, up 51.0%, with 45.3 million flight hours in the year, up 69.9%, and 46 networked low-altitude flight-service stations [statistic, CAAC] [S22]; real-name registrations passed 4.788 million by the end of June 2026 [official, CAAC] [S23]. The often-quoted RMB 1.5 trillion market size for 2025 is a CAAC forecast relayed by media [S13]; CCID Consulting estimated the 2024 market at RMB 670.25 billion across manufacturing, infrastructure, operations and services [forecast, CCID] [S24].

2. Carbon fiber market 2025: wind drives the volume, aerospace keeps the value

Guangzhou Sail Carbon Fiber counts global demand at 224,510 t in 2025, after 2023 brought the first decline since 1995. Wind blades took about 100,000 t, or 44.5%, up 127% in a year and roughly 82% of the global increase [estimate]. Aerospace and defense was only 12.6% of composite volume but about 60.8% of composite value [survey, Sail] [S1]. Toray's own, narrower estimate puts 2025 demand at 138 kt rising to 179 kt by 2028, a 9% compound rate [company, June 2026 investor day] [S5]. The two series use different scopes, are not reconcilable and should never be averaged.

Prices roughly halved between 2022 and 2025 and are now firming. Sail puts the average price of Chinese-supplied fiber at USD 18/kg in 2025, down from USD 33/kg in 2022, with China's operating capacity of 171,080 t running at 66.3% utilization [survey, Sail] [S1]. Toray, which held prices low through most of 2025 to keep share, announced increases at year-end [S1], and Baiinfo's daily market average for Chinese carbon fiber stood at RMB 85.5/kg on 3 November 2026 [statistic, Baiinfo] [S15].

3. Glass fiber market 2025: roving at the bottom, electronic cloth at a peak

China produced 8.43 million t of glass fiber yarn in 2025, up 11.5%, with tank-furnace yarn at 96% of the total and 860,000 t of new capacity from seven new and three cold-repaired furnaces. Apparent domestic consumption rose 16.7% to 6.585 million t while exports slipped 3.6% to 1.95 million t [statistic, CGFIA] [S2]. By the end of June 2026 total yarn capacity was about 9.3 million t, of which 8.65 million t was tank-furnace capacity in production, and first-half output grew about 7.9% [statistic, CGFIA flash data] [S3].

The cycle is K-shaped. Standard alkali-free roving bottomed at RMB 3,113/t in March 2024 and has recovered only to RMB 3,600 to 3,900/t, while electronic yarn and cloth went the other way on AI server demand: G75 yarn averaged RMB 23,450/t on 15 September 2026, up 167.4% year on year, and 7628 cloth averaged RMB 10.2/m in August 2026, up 162% year on year and 121% since January [statistic, Sublime China Information] [S3]. Trade policy is now a structural cost. In September 2026 the EU renewed its 13.1% countervailing duty on Egyptian continuous filament glass fiber for five years [official, Implementing Regulation 2026/2107] [S25]; it stacks with the 11.0% anti-dumping duty applied since 15 April 2026, a combined 24.1% on Jushi's Egyptian base [estimate], while CPIC's Bahrain plant pays 11.8% and Thai producers 15.3–25.4% [official, Implementing Regulation 2026/831 as corrected by 2026/1371] [S12].

4. Why eVTOL airframes are carbon fiber: specific modulus and a three-year lock-in

Three facts set the division of labor between the fibers. First, specific stiffness: Toray T700S has a typical tensile modulus of 230 GPa at 1.80 g/cm³ [company datasheet] [S7], while AGY lists E-glass at 72.3 GPa and 2.58 g/cm³ and S-2 Glass at 86.9 GPa and 2.46 g/cm³ [company datasheet] [S6]. That gives T700S a specific modulus near 128 GPa·cm³/g against 28 for E-glass and 35 for S-2 [estimate]. On battery-powered aircraft every kilogram saved returns about 3 km of range in the engineers' rule of thumb [media, 36Kr] [S20], so every certified or near-certified eVTOL uses T700/T800-class carbon fiber with epoxy prepreg for primary structure.

Second, price: E-glass roving at RMB 3.6 to 3.9/kg [S3] against a Chinese carbon fiber market average of RMB 85.5/kg in November 2026 [S15] is a 22- to 24-fold spread before aerospace-grade premiums [estimate]. Third, certification lock-in: changing a qualified material means repeating static and fatigue testing, roughly three years of work [media, 36Kr] [S20]. That is why OEMs sign with one material supplier early and why the T700/T800 epoxy system will dominate eVTOL structures to 2030 even as T1100 and T1200 fibers become available.

5. Where glass fiber still wins on aircraft: radomes, insulation, fire and impact

Carbon fiber conducts electricity and shields radio waves, so it cannot be used for any transparent window. Low-altitude aircraft carry obstacle-avoidance radar, command-and-control data links, ADS-B and 5G-A antennas, and each needs a radome or antenna cover made from glass or quartz fiber. At 10 GHz, S-glass has a dielectric constant of about 5.2 against 6.1 for E-glass [company, Toray Advanced Composites] [S26], and Saint-Gobain Quartzel quartz fiber 3.74 with a loss tangent of 0.0002 [company datasheet] [S8]. Buyers specifying radomes should ask for dielectric constant and loss tangent measured at the operating frequency and after humid aging; a 1 MHz datasheet value does not describe radar-band behavior.

Within aerospace composites, JEC's 2024 data gives 74% carbon fiber, 20% glass fiber and 6% aramid; across all composites glass fiber still holds more than 90% of 13.5 million t of global output [statistic, JEC Observer] [S4].

6. Demand scenarios: thousands of tonnes, not tens of thousands

The arithmetic is modest. If China's often-quoted white-paper figure of 12,000 new passenger eVTOLs a year by 2030 were fully delivered at 100 to 400 kg each, carbon fiber demand would be 1,200 to 4,800 t a year, or 0.5 to 2.1% of 2025 global demand [estimate], using Debon Securities' per-aircraft range [S19] and Sail's 2025 total [S1]. The roughly 6,300 global eVTOL orders Cirium counted in May 2023 translate to 630 to 2,520 t cumulative. Wind energy added about 56,000 t of carbon fiber demand in 2025 alone. Production rates confirm the scale: Joby's near-term target is four aircraft a month by 2027 and Archer plans two a month.

One widely circulated figure needs correcting: the claim that eVTOL thermoplastic demand rises from 500 t in 2024 to 11,750 t in 2030 is Stratview's forecast for all eVTOL composites, of which thermoplastics are under 10%. Thermoplastic carbon fiber composites were about USD 1.52 billion in 2025, roughly 5% of resin-based carbon composites, and mostly discontinuous-fiber compounds; continuous-fiber thermoplastics were only about USD 0.5 billion [survey, Sail] [S1]. The value for material producers lies in aerospace-grade prepreg, qualified allowables databases and long supply agreements, not in tonnage.

7. Supply chain map: one material supplier per OEM

Internationally the pattern is exclusive pairing. In China the state aerospace system moved first: AVIC claims to supply more than 90% of the EH216's carbon fiber (trade-show statement), Zhongfu Shenying is reported to supply EHang and XPeng AeroHT directly or indirectly, Guangwei has started a light-aircraft composite structures project, Zhongjian Technology reports civil products in customer validation, HRC supplies carbon fiber structures to a Chinese eVTOL developer, and Wote Advanced Materials supplies PEEK for drone blades. Almost no structural contract value has been disclosed.

Glass fiber leaders including Jushi, Taishan and CPIC have the relevant grades, but none has announced a low-altitude order; CPIC's investor-relations position is that it sells base material and has no direct business with end customers [company]. For buyers, the practical consequence is counterparty risk on both sides: Lilium's collapse pushed its battery supplier CustomCells into insolvency, which blamed tens of millions of dollars in unpaid bills [media, Aviation Week] [S29].

8. Manufacturing routes and five trends to 2030

Certified programs use aerospace routes: autoclave or out-of-autoclave prepreg laid by hand or by automated fiber placement, as at Joby's Marina plant. Rate pressure is shifting the industry toward RTM, HP-RTM and compression molding for frames and brackets, and toward thermoplastic forming with induction, ultrasonic or laser welding to remove fasteners; Airbus's MFFD demonstrator targets 60 to 100 fuselages a month with laser-welded 8 m seams. Drone arms are filament-wound or pultruded carbon tubes, and pultruded GFRP serves ground infrastructure.

9. What this means for buyers sourcing composites from China

Ground infrastructure moves before fleets. Vertiports, charging stations and the 46 networked flight-service stations China counted at end-2025 [S22] need insulating, corrosion-resistant pultruded profiles and grating, which is where Chinese pultrusion capacity is deepest and lead times shortest. Drone structures are a mature export category: carbon fiber arms, tubes and glass-filled engineering-plastic housings are produced at scale for consumer, agricultural and logistics drones.

• Request material test certificates against EN 13706 or ASTM methods rather than nominal datasheet values, and keep fiber-level data separate from laminate data.
• For radomes and antenna covers, ask for dielectric constant and loss tangent at the operating frequency (GHz, not 1 MHz) and after humid aging.
• For eVTOL primary structure, plan for three-year qualification cycles, OEM-controlled material specifications and counterparty risk on both sides of the contract.
• GetFRP supplier profiles attribute company statements; they do not replace order-specific test evidence or a scoped factory review.

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