Results for: lilium

German air taxi company Lilium has added to its team former head of communications at Rolls-Royce Aerospace Oliver Walker-Jones. The team now includes former high-ranking executives from Airbus and Audi, as well as Frank Stephenson, who worked in design at Ferrari, BMW, and MINI.

At Rolls-Royce Aerospace, Walker-Jones’ role included acting on the outward-facing aspect of the company as well as internal communications. At Lilium, he will be responsible for much the same thing, but will also focus on helping the business grow globally. This suggests that Lilium has plans to go global rather than just staying local to Germany.

Concept image of a future Lilium vertiport

The addition of Walker-Jones is important to note as Rolls-Royce is working on its own eVTOL design as well. Mr. Walker-Jones’ speaks to his decision to join Lilium:
“We have the chance to inspire and excite people of all ages and backgrounds across the globe and I can’t wait to make the most of that opportunity.”

“I’m genuinely thrilled to be joining a company of world-class engineers, remarkable designers, and top managers, and I look forward to playing my part in telling the Lilium story.”–Oliver Walker-Jones, new Head of Communications at Lilium and former Head of Communications at Rolls-Royce Aerospace

As a reminder, The Lilium Jet is unique in that it is one of the few eVTOLs propelled by jets. The design features two fixed-wings with a total of thirty-six small ducted jet-fans that can tilt between vertical and horizontal flight, giving the Lilium jet one of the sleekest aesthetics on the market. Lilium will soon face the challenge of launching air taxi services globally with a planned launch of 2025.

The Lilium Jet, which flew its maiden test flight in 2017

Why its important: Prior to the hiring of Walker-Jones, Lilium has also recently hired Mirko Reuter, former Head of Automated Driving at Audi, Jakob Waeschenbach, former Head of Equipment Installation at Airbus, and Frank Stephenson, who worked in design at Ferrari, BMW, and MINI. . With these new hires, Lilium shows that it’s serious about taking on the future of on-demand eVTOL flight, and with so many experienced professionals on board, it has continued to position itself well to lead the industry.

Personal Airline Exchange (PAX) just placed an order for 50 Ampaire EEL Electric Aircraft.

Personal Airline Exchange (PAX) is a newly surfaced company offering shared regional flight chartering. On the PAX platform, customers will be able to book flights on private aircraft and split the cost with other customers, paying a ‘per seat’ price, much like an Uber Pool. This is a model shared by companies like BLADE, NetJets, Surf Air, and others. PAX is still currently in the fundraising stage, having just started a campaign on crowdfunding platform Startengine. PAX intends to initially pilot its service with Ampaire aircraft in Southern California before scaling nationwide.

Ampaire, while still waiting for certification, is well on its way to production.  “Ampaire’s Electric EEL pre-production prototype is flying right now and performing beautifully,” said CEO Kevin Noertke. “We look forward to operators being able to share the thrill of flying electric.” Ampaire is targeting certifying its Electric EEL product in 2021:

While Ampaire is not the only electric aircraft maker, it made history earlier this month by flying the Ampaire 337, which is the highest capacity hybrid-electric aircraft ever flown. Other companies making electric aircraft include Zunum Aero and MagniX, which just partnered with Harbour Air to transform its seaplanes into an all-electric fleet.

PAX has stated its intentions of partnering with Ampaire for long term, planning to reserve Ampaire’s TailWind electric jets once they become available. PAX’s ultimate goal is to build a network utilizing thousands of airports to achieve true and affordable on-demand travel .

Why it’s important: The recent order from PAX for 50 Ampaire aircraft establishes PAX as another company with the vision of building a fully electric on-demand aviation network. With Ampaire’s flight technology already prototyped and nearly ready for deployment, Ampaire can help PAX achieve its goal of beginning operations sooner rather than later in Southern California, driving the industry of personalized air travel forward.

German air taxi company Volocopter just released its own white paper on the future of Urban Air Mobility.

The latest white paper from Volocopter focuses on how to to overcome barriers to market for urban air mobility, covering issues like development, certification and service launch. Specific sections of the document discuss safety, noise emissions, range & speed, operating costs, capacity, and usability. Read the full white paper here.

According to Volocopter, the main bullet points of its white paper are:

• There is no single “best” eVTOL concept, because mission is paramount when designing electrically powered aircraft. The Volocopter, for instance, is designed for the commercial intra-city urban air mobility mission (UAM) so-called air taxis.

• Air taxis serving the intra-city UAM mission need to cover the most popular high-traffic routes in major cities, offering meaningful time savings and/or allow connections between points that are not well served by current options. The paper shows that a range of 25 to 35 km is viable and a valid starting point to develop the market.

• Pricing is a key factor in making air taxis accessible to a large customer base. Keeping operating costs low to build a scalable business will allow for accessible pricing.

Notably, Volocopter is not the first to release a white paper on UAM. Just two weeks, ago, EmbraerX released its ‘Flight Plan 2030’ vision for urban aviation infrastructure, encompassing everything from manufacturing to air traffic management. In February of this year, Airbus released ‘Airbus Altiscope‘, a blueprint for the company’s roll-out plan for UAM. And, most importantly, Uber Elevate set the stage with its original UAM white paper in 2016. 

Why it’s important: By writing a white paper, Volocopter has signaled to the industry both its depth of research and its readiness to enter the market. Although the Volocopter 2X does not have the range of many other urban aircraft, Volocopter uses this white paper to support its strategy for targeting short but highly trafficked routes. With testing in Singapore coming up later this year, it’s clear that Volocopter is planning on the long-term.

Elusive company Jaunt Air Mobility has been named as a new eVTOL partner for the future Uber Air network.

The Jaunt Air Mobility eVTOL has a unique design in that it features only one large single lift rotor, making it a combination between a helicopter and and a small airplane. Jaunt Air Mobility calls this technology ‘ROSA’-an acronym for “Reduced rotor Operating Speed Aircraft”. This means that the lift rotor, using its length, can also operate to give lift from horizontal flight. Jaunt mentions that specific advantages of its design include a high level of efficiency in hover, quiet flight, and the ability to keep passengers at a level position throughout the entire flight.

From its beginning, Jaunt Air Mobility was focused on becoming a partner for the Uber Air network. The eVTOL, once named the ‘Carter Copter’ was designed specifically to meet Uber’s noise, safety, and performance requirements. Carter Aviation, acquired by Jaunt in early 2019, has been making gyrocopter (airplane/helicopter combination) technology demonstrators since as early as 1994. Learn more about Carter’s Slowed Rotor/Compound technology here.

Said Kaydon Stanzione, founder of Jaunt Air Mobility:
“We are pleased to be working with Uber as they have set the highest standards for safety, performance, and community acceptance which are inherent characteristics of our Jaunt aircraft design.”

Learn more about the Jaunt Air Mobility eVTOL specs here.

Why it’s important: The addition of Jaunt Air Mobility to the Uber Air partner network shows that Uber Elevate is willing to experiment with a wide range of different design types to understand what will work best for urban aviation. While some of the other partner designs feature more new technologies, the Carter Copter features flight-tested, patented technology that may help speed the certification process to flight.