Results for: lilium

Lilium Releases New Flight Test Footage

24 October 2019 || 4 min read

Just six months after unveiling the latest version of its prototype, Munich based air taxi company Lilium has released footage of its five-passenger jet making the transition from vertical to horizontal flight: The Lilium jet can seat 5 passengers, fly at 186mph, is all-electric, and has a range of nearly 200 miles. Lilium plans to build not just the aircraft...

Lilium Releases New Flight Test Footage

24 October 2019 || 4 min read

Just six months after unveiling the latest version of its prototype, Munich based air taxi company Lilium has released footage of its five-passenger jet making the transition from vertical to horizontal flight:

The Lilium jet can seat 5 passengers, fly at 186mph, is all-electric, and has a range of nearly 200 miles. Lilium plans to build not just the aircraft itself, but an entire urban and regional air mobility system in Europe that will allow people to fly anywhere at the tap of a button.

Lilium has been working on its jet air taxi since 2015, and flew the first two-seater prototype in 2017. Since then, the company has gained great prestige by hiring former executives from Gett, Tesla, Airbus, Audi, BMW, and Rolls Royce Aerospace. Lilium has established its software engineering headquarters in London, and is currently seeking to raise an additional $500 million.

The latest prototype, which exhibited speeds of over 100km/h earlier this week, features a total of 36 ducted funs, which are built into the wing itself. During vertical take-off, these point straight down, and then tilt slowly upward to become flush with the wing and provide horizontal thrust as in a tradition airplane. Because these small motors are electric, they feature some of the best power-to-weight ratios in the entire aviation industry, with a total of 2000 horsepower available.

The Lilium Jet’s tilting fans

“The Lilium Jet continues to meet our expectations, delivering excellent in-flight performance and remarkably smooth transition from vertical to horizontal flight. ” –Leandro Bigarella, Head of Flight Testing.

This test marks the completion of the Lilium Jet’s first phase of testing, which has consisted of over 100 ground and air tests. The company will now move into the next stage of testing where the aircraft will endure higher speed operations and eventually attain certification.

“It’s been thrilling to watch the Lilium Jet progress so rapidly and to see our first flying taxi manufacturing facility. We are taking tangible and concrete steps towards making our vision of regional air mobility a reality and we’re doing it on time.” –Daniel Wiegand, co-founder and CEO

With this latest announcement, Lilium has also announced the completion of its first large-scale manufacturing facility, which is 3000 square feet. It has also begun construction of a much larger facility, and hired Yves Yemsi, former Head of Program Quality for the Airbus A350, as Chief Program Officer.

Lilium plans to launch commercial services in multiple cities around the world by 2025. To learn more about the Jet and its mission, visit the Lilium website.

Why it’s important: Many industry experts have named the transition from vertical to horizontal flight as one of the greatest engineering challenges in VTOL design. Lilium has now overcome this important barrier, marking its jet as one of the highest-performing eVTOL prototypes in the industry. With this latest announcement, Lilium continues to make timely progress toward its planned 2025 commercial launch.

Lilium Looking To Raise Up To $500 Million

13 October 2019 || 4 min read

The company is in talks with investors for potentially their largest funding round to date The German startup is currently looking to bring up their financial position with a large jump. According to sources close to Lilium, the company has been talking with their investors to raise nearly half a billion dollars in their next round of funding; an investment...

Lilium Looking To Raise Up To $500 Million

13 October 2019 || 4 min read

The company is in talks with investors for potentially their largest funding round to date

The German startup is currently looking to bring up their financial position with a large jump. According to sources close to Lilium, the company has been talking with their investors to raise nearly half a billion dollars in their next round of funding; an investment which would be their largest to date. “It’s a very large round at a very large valuation,” said one venture capitalist to TechCrunch.

The specifics of this latest round are still unknown; Lilium has not divulged who will be participating in the funding round nor what the valuations might be. While the startup already has been backed by many large investors, such as WeChat owner and Chinese internet giant Tencent, Atomico, founded by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, Obvious Ventures, the early-stage VC fund co-founded by Twitter’s Ev Williams, LGT, the international private banking and asset management group, and Freigeist (formerly called e42), a fund led by Frank Thelen and backed in part by Christian Reber (co-founder of Wunderlist and now Pitch), this latest round of funding if successful would quintuple the current net worth of the company.

“It’s a known secret how hard it is to raise growth rounds in this space because it’s such a new and untested market,” an executive from another air-taxi startup noted. “Early investments were betting on the market vision and the concept of radically new mobility, but now it’s dawning on investors and others that it’s also a regulation play, and more.” That translates potentially to sustained costs, “and that may be one reason why it’s taking some time.”

With plans to “transform transportation” by producing and maintaining a fleet of eVTOL aircraft, Lilium founder and CEO Daniel Wiegand looks to secure the proper funds to achieve such a large task. “It’s not only a benefit in terms of relieving society from transit traffic, but the much, much bigger benefit would be that everyone can use it and that people can get to their destination five times quicker, basically a five times increase of their daily radius of life,” said Wiegand, “This connectivity is going to be a huge benefit to society but also economic growth.”

Lilium’s most recent funding round raised $90 million, lead by investors Tencent, Atomico, and Obvious Ventures. A target valuation of nearly half a billion would suggest that these big names could pop up again.

Why it’s important: A successful funding round by Lilium would signify the largest funding round of any aerial mobility venture to date, and allow for Lilium to realize their goals of both mass-producing their aircraft and to provide and maintain a wide-reaching aerial mobility service; a huge step forward ahead of any other company in the aerial mobility sector.

Source // TechCrunch

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Lilium Selects London for its Software Engineering Base

19 June 2019 || 3 min read

Air taxi company Lilium has officially selected London to host its software engineering and development team. Lilium is a well-known aspiring air taxi company famous for developing the Lilium Jet. Although its headquarters are in Munich, Lilium recently announced its decision to build a software engineering base in London. Lilium believes this new software base will create hundreds of jobs in London...

Lilium Selects London for its Software Engineering Base

19 June 2019 || 3 min read

Air taxi company Lilium has officially selected London to host its software engineering and development team.

The Lilium Jet air taxi

Lilium is a well-known aspiring air taxi company famous for developing the Lilium Jet. Although its headquarters are in Munich, Lilium recently announced its decision to build a software engineering base in London. Lilium believes this new software base will create hundreds of jobs in London over the next five years.

Lilium is one of the primary air taxi companies in the UK, looking to begin commercial services in 2025. The company is not only developing its own jet, but is also building the entire eVTOL network including Skyports, day-to-day operations technology, and the mobile application for users.

Conceptual rendering of a Lilium Skyport in London

Along with this announcement, Lilium also announced new team members. These include Carlos Morgado, former CTO at Just Eat, and Anja Maassen van den Brink of VodafoneZiggo. At the new London base, Mordago will assist in forming the new engineering team as Vice President of Digital Technology, while Maassen will work as the new CPO (Chief People Officer). The company also hired Luca Benassi as chief development engineer, who previously worked at NASA, Boeing, and Airbus.

This announcement comes shortly after Lilium revealed the new, larger version of its eVTOL jet, now capable of carrying five passengers. Just last month, the new jet could be seen completing a successful hover flight. Watch that flight here.

“We are one of very few companies in our sector that wants to both produce air taxis and then operate them day-to-day. Today’s announcement and the recruitment of these three new leaders underlines our continuous efforts to build the very best team in air mobility. We are hiring the best of the best from a global talent base, forming the basis for achieving our target of becoming the leading air mobility company.” –Lilium CEO Daniel Wiegand

The potential for Lilium air taxi operations in the UK

Why it’s important: Notably, Lilium is one of the few UAM companies building both an aircraft itself and the operations and infrastructure for customer use. Although this is an ambitious task, Lilium has already added executives from Rollls-Royce Aerospace, Airbus, Audi, and more. While the company certainly has its work cut out, the highly capable team is likely to fulfill its vision.

Lilium’s 36-Engine Air Taxi Completes First Test Flight

18 May 2019 || 4 min read

Munich-based air taxi startup Lilium has now flown a five-seat version of their electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft. With the help of top engineers and business professionals from the automotive and aerospace industries, Lilium has been flying a two-seater prototype for over two years now. However, it was just earlier this month that the full-scale version, which is...

Lilium’s 36-Engine Air Taxi Completes First Test Flight

18 May 2019 || 4 min read

The Lilium jet features a propulsion system much different than you’d see in your typical commercial jet – it uses not two, not four, but 36 electric jet engines to provide a maximum of 2000 horsepower. These engines tilt on the flaps of the aircraft for vertical thrust throughout takeoff and landing, then rotate to a horizontal orientation for cruise, during which they draw only 10 percent of the maximum output of the electric motors.

For more technical specifications of the Lilium Jet, visit the Hangar.

While Lilium is the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for the five-seat air taxi, the company also plans to operate a network of ride-sharing aircraft in a similar fashion to Uber; vehicles will be requested via a smartphone app. Lilium intends to use a fleet of their jets to transport customers around metropolitan areas and between neighboring cities as a faster, less traffic-riddled alternative to automotive transportation. While the price of this service is not expected to be comparable to an UberX or other car ridesharing, it is promised to save the customer time. For example, the flight from Manhattan to JFK – a route that VTOL aircraft operator, BLADE, already flies – takes only six minutes, compared to around an hour by car.

Photo // Lilium

Additionally, the regional flights Lilium plans to offer are predicted to be priced comparably to current commercial flights, but will likely be more environmentally friendly due to the production of zero emissions with the use of electric motors. Researchers at the University of Michigan found that flying cars prove to be more energy efficient than gasoline powered cars on trips 21 miles or more in length. The Lilium jet ultimately is expected to have a range of nearly 200 miles, making it one of the most capable air taxis coming to the market in the near future.

Also notably, Lilium recently hired former executives from Rolls-Royce, Airbus, Audi, and even Ferrari/BMW.

Why it’s important: The new five-seater iteration of the Lilium jet marks the aircraft’s base design as it moves forward to mass production. Given this, the aircraft is currently undergoing rigorous testing in order to discover any potential for improvements before the design is finalized. The first flight, while seemingly short, takes a major step toward providing an entire fleet that can be hailed at customer’s fingertips.

Sources // The Atlantic; Lilium

Lilium Hires former Rolls-Royce Aerospace Head of Communications

20 December 2018 || 3 min read

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...

Lilium Hires former Rolls-Royce Aerospace Head of Communications

20 December 2018 || 3 min read

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.

Lilium hires former Rolls-Royce Aerospace head of communications Oliver Walker-Jones withI intentions to go global

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.”

Lilium hires Oliver Walker-Jones as head of communication

“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.

Lilium Adds Former Executives From Airbus and Audi

11 November 2018 || 5 min read

The Lilium air taxi is getting closer to market. It recently hired Mirko Reuter, former head of Automated Driving at Audi, Jakob Waeschenbach, former head of Equipment Installation at Airbus, and Rochus Moenter, former Vice President of Finance and Leasing at Airbus. Lilium is a German company based out of Munich. Its air taxi design is one of the sleekest on the market, and...

Lilium Adds Former Executives From Airbus and Audi

11 November 2018 || 5 min read

Lilium is a German company based out of Munich. Its air taxi design is one of the sleekest on the market, and with over $90 million in funding achieved just last year, its well on its way to being one of the world’s first on demand air taxis.

Mirko Reuter, the new Head of Autonomous Flight at Lilium, was formerly the Head of Automated Driving at Audi. There, he led the development of all automated driving functions, as well as the development of vehicle platforms technologies and future vehicle concepts. At Lilium, he will be responsible for the process of developing the technologies necessarily to bring autonomous flights completely to market.

Lilium hires Mirko Reuter, former head of autonomous driving at Audi

“I am deeply committed to our mission of creating a revolutionary service that enables effective and affordable transportation that is widely used among all sectors of society. At Lilium, we are building a new and revolutionary way of transport, and I am very excited to be a part of it.” -Mikro Router

Jakob Waeschenbach, formerly the Head of Equipment Installation at Airbus, will be the new Head of Aircraft Assembly at Lilium. Waeschenbach spent years at Airbus ensuring quality in manufacturing, engineering, logistics, supply chain and finance. He also developed Airbus’s new and certified production line of the Single Aisle Family of aircraft. At Lilium, he will “lead the convergence between aircraft and automotive production”, and will assist in establish Lilium’s first production facility.

Lilium's new head of Aircraft Assembly Jakob Waeschenbac

“I am thrilled to shape the early stages of merging automotive and aircraft production to finally change travelling and commuting in urban spaces. Catching onto this unique momentum is incredibly exciting.” -Jakob Waeschenbach,

Lilium will also be adding Roechus Moenter, who was the former Vice President of Airbus’s Finance and Leasing Group. Moenter will be the General Counsel and Head of Legal for Lilium.

The company is unique in that it plans to be a direct competitor to UberAir. Like Uber Elevate, it plans to roll out its services in 2025. Unlike many of the current eVTOL developers on the market, Lilium has not sought to become a partner for Uber, and instead has opted to develop its own operations and front-end service. Potential routes are Manhattan to JFK and Paris to London.

As a reminder, the Lilium is a eVTOL featuring tilted duct-fans that can travel at speeds up to 300km/h with a 300km range. It’s design features a total of 18 integrated jet engines that can seamlessly transition from horizontal to Vertical flight. Lilium completed it’s maiden flight in April 2017, and Lilium plans to complete it’s first manned test flight in 2019. Read more about the Lilium eVTOL.

Why it’s important:

With this major hire from two big players in vehicle innovation and production, Lilium further marks it’s place as main competitor for air taxi services. With Uber as one of the other biggest companies in the space, Lilium needs to be doing everything it can to put itself at the forefront of the industry, as conveyed by Lilium CEO and co-founder:

“To bring the best talent to Lilium has always been our goal. We are delighted to welcome such a high calibre of new team members that will bring a wealth of expertise in key strategic areas to our growing company and further enable our vision.”

Lilium Jet

21 June 2018 || < 1 min read

Lilium Jet

21 June 2018 || < 1 min read

Quick Summary

The Lilium Jet is an eVTOL designed and manufactured near Munich, Germany. The Jet uses swiveling ducted fans to provide vertical thrust for takeoff and landing. These same fans then slowly rotate towards rear facing as the Jet accelerates and converts to its forward flight mode.

Lilium, a Munich, Germany based company

Stage of Development

Preliminary Design

Prototype Build

Flight Testing

Certification

Commercially Operating

Technical Details

From Lilium's Technical Overview

"At Lilium, we have invented a completely new aircraft concept for the modern age. While vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) itself is not new – after all, quadcopters, tilt rotors and tilt wings are well-known concepts – we did not want to accept the compromises inherent to these configurations.

Quadcopters excel with their simplicity but are highly inefficient in cruise flight. Transition aircraft can fly three times faster and ten times further with an equally sized battery, but system complexity is usually much higher.

So, the goal was set: defining a transition aircraft concept with better performance in safety, noise, speed, range and payload than existing concepts, while cutting complexity to one third.

We challenged physical limitations, mechanical complexity and energy laws, until we came up with something new and unique. Something simple and efficient."

The Jet

The Lilium Jet consists of a rigid winged body with 12 flaps. Each one carries three electric jet engines. Depending on the flight mode, the flaps tilt from a vertical into a horizontal position. At take-off, all flaps are tilted vertical, so that the engines can lift the aircraft. Once airborne, the flaps gradually tilt into a horizontal position, leading the aircraft to accelerate. When they have reached complete horizontal position, all lift necessary to stay aloft is provided by the wings as on a conventional airplane.

The beauty of this system is its simplicity. In comparison to existing concepts, Lilium Jets require no gearboxes, no foldable or variable pitch propellers, no water-cooling, and no aerodynamic steering flaps. Just tiltable electric engines.

What’s more: The Lilium Jet has the highest possible structural efficiency. As we can provide differential thrust from the engines in cruise flight, no stabilizing tail is necessary.

The design of the electric engines ensures a very low drag coefficient in cruise flight, leading to a higher speed and range. The energy consumption per seat and kilometer thereby becomes comparable to an electric car – but the jet is 3 times faster.

The Lilium Jet uses an integrated high-lift system. The objective is to increase the lift of the wings even at low speeds to save energy. While hovering is very energy-consuming, as an aircraft must provide thrust equal to its own weight, dynamic lift of wings consumes much less energy to stay aloft. So, it is important to create as much dynamic lift from the wings as possible, even at very low speeds.

The electric jet engines work like turbofan jet engines in a regular passenger jet. They suck in air, compress it and push it out the back. However, the compressor fan in the front is not turned by a gas turbine, but by a high performance electric motor. Therefore, they run much quieter and completely emission-free.

Our Take on the Lilium Jet

The Lilium Jet is sleek, fast, and successful thus far in flight testing. Lilium has produced (in under 5 years) a very viable prototype eVTOL with a target entry to market of 2025, and a target first manned flight in early 2019. Given their past timeline and rate of progress, both of these goals seem achievable by the German team. Furthermore, the company has gone to great lengths to ensure that their entire experience matches the design paradigms of their eVTOL, and that they make no compromises in safety or the operation of their eVTOL. While keeping relatively quiet in terms of public demonstration flights, the videos depicting flight testing of the Jet are impressive enough on their own and should be a good indicator for future success of the company.

References

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Lilium Adds Frank Stephenson as Head of Product Design

24 April 2018 || 2 min read

Lilium has added the renowned Frank Stephenson to head their product design. In a news release late Monday, Lilium announced that the car designer, who has worked with Ferrari, MINI, and BMW, would be joining the Lilium Team. “My last job was as high up as you could be in the car design world. The obvious question was – what...

EHang Implements Air Transport to Aid Coronavirus Medical Emergencies

26 February 2020 || 4 min read

EHang Holdings Limited (Nasdaq: EH) has announced new progress in implementing real-world Urban Air Mobility (UAM) applications for medical emergency transport uses to combat the coronavirus outbreak in China. Related: EHang’s IPO Results in $662 Million Valuation In recent exercises for the prevention and control of coronavirus epidemic organized by the local authorities of Hezhou city in Guangxi province, EHang 216, the two-seat passenger-grade AAV...

EHang Implements Air Transport to Aid Coronavirus Medical Emergencies

26 February 2020 || 4 min read

In recent exercises for the prevention and control of coronavirus epidemic organized by the local authorities of Hezhou city in Guangxi province, EHang 216, the two-seat passenger-grade AAV successfully transported medical supplies from Hezhou Square to the Hezhou People’s Hospital, which is 4 kilometers apart, by accurately landing on a 25-story rooftop of the hospital.

The EHang 216 AAV autonomously returned following the delivery. The 8-kilometer round-trip flight operation was unmanned which is critical in current epidemic situation. This has opened up a new opportunity for EHang’s AAVs in immediate UAM applications such as medical emergency transport, which currently largely relies on ambulance cars or helicopters.

More importantly, designed as a passenger-grade AAV, EHang 216 can not only transport medical supplies, but also transport personnel in emergency situations. Edward Xu, EHang’s Chief Strategy Officer (CSO), took a 4-kilometer autonomous flight from the city center and landed safely on the rooftop of the hospital (picture below) in one of the series of urban passenger-carrying flights to test run this use case in Hezhou, including the flights at nights, with the range covering the whole city (over 15 kilometers) and at a cruising speed as high as 90 kilometers per hour.

EHang 216 preparing to land with CSO Edward Xu aboard, proving its ability to assist in the fight against the coronavirus outbreak. Credit // EHang

“Personally, I’m proud to be one of the passengers to take the initial autonomous flights for medical emergency transport, and enjoyed the safe, fast and smooth journey. In urban emergency situation, this enables people or goods to be transported efficiently across the city in nearly straight-line routes. More importantly, as a passenger, I was free to enjoy my tea and urban scenery during the whole flight as everything was automatically piloted,” said Edward. “Such successful flights have demonstrated EHang’s capabilities in delivering safe and high quality AAVs to meet mission-critical demands in real life. We will continue to implement more UAM applications.”

Why it’s important: From surveillance to medical supply deliveries, China has deployed many cutting edge technologies in support of the fight against the coronavirus outbreak. EHang has proven the ability of its 216 eVTOL to support in these critical circumstances, and is not the first demonstration of aerial mobility technology being used in real-world medical support applications. An increase in the variety of successful executions of urban air mobility technology continues to advance the mobility industry and expand what many have thought possible for the utility of these vehicles.

Stuttgart Aerospace EOLOS EVTOL

24 February 2020 || < 1 min read