Lilium Jet

Lilium GmbH
Privately held company
Industry Aerospace
Founded 2015
Founder Sebastian Born, Matthias Meiner, Patrick Nathen, Daniel Wiegand
Headquarters Wessling, near Gilching, Bavaria, Germany
Key people
 Daniel Wiegand, Remo Gerber, Patrick Nathen, Sebastian Born, Frank Stephenson, Meggy Sailer
Products VTOL light sport aircraft
Number of employees
 170
Website www.lilium.com

The Lilium Jet is a proposed German vertical take-off and landing electrically powered light sport aircraft designed by Lilium GmbH.[1]

History

Lilium was founded in 2015 by four engineers and PhD students at the Technical University of Munich. They are supported by the Business Incubation Center Bavaria, the European Space Agency ESA, a Chinese Internet company, a bank, a technology fund and private investors.[2]

The Lilium Eagle, an unmanned two-seat proof of concept model, had its maiden flight at the airfield Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich in Germany on April 20, 2017. Lilium plans to launch the 5-seat Lilium Jet until 2025, it would be targeted as part of an air taxi service.[3]

The registered office of Lilium GmbH is in Weßling near Gilching[4][5] in Bavaria, Germany, European Union. Lilium finished a new finance round of $90 Million in March 2018.[6]

Since May 2018, the car designer Frank Stephenson[7] takes care of the design. He already worked for BMW and designed various sports car brands. Most recently Arnd Mueller,[8] previously Chief Brand Marketing Officer & GM Esprit Image GmbH - Member of the Executive Management Team, became VP Marketing of Lilium. He is to build the air taxi development company and its product into an international brand.

Design and development

The Lilium Jet is a five-seat canard light sport aircraft, it has twelve flaps each fitted with three electric jet engines. The flaps will allow the aircraft to take off vertical and transit to level flight as the flaps are moved.[9] The flaps are directed downwards to start, creating vertical lift. Ongoing flying they are in horizontal position, so the forward thrust results. Here, the wings contribute to the buoyancy, which is energetically much more economical than the pure rotorcraft.

Technical specifications

The technical data are from the early phase of 2016.[10]

Parameter Data
Pilotautopilot possible

can be controlled from the ground or in the aircraft

Passengers2 (5 planned from 2025)
maximum take-off weight600 kg
Payload200 kg
maximum speed300 km/h
range300 km
Engines36 electric motors with a total of 320 kW
Price300.000 €

See also

References

  1. ↑ Hodgetts, Rob (April 25, 2017). "Successful test flight brings Lilium electric air taxis closer to reality". CNN.
  2. ↑ crunchbase (August 6, 2018). "Lilium Aviation". crunchbase. Retrieved August 6, 2018.
  3. ↑ BBC (April 20, 2017). "Jet-propelled sky taxi tested in Germany". BBC. Retrieved August 6, 2018.
  4. ↑ Lilium (August 6, 2018). "Imprint". lilium. Retrieved August 6, 2018.
  5. ↑ crunchbase (August 6, 2018). "Lilium Aviation". crunchbase. Retrieved August 6, 2018.
  6. ↑ Jonas Jansen (September 5, 2017). "Für ihr Flugauto bekommen diese deutschen Erfinder 90 Millionen Dollar". FAZ. Retrieved August 6, 2018.
  7. ↑ Anthony Cuthbertson (April 25, 2018). "Famous car designer swaps Ferrari for flying taxis because 'there's too much traffic'". independent. Retrieved August 6, 2018.
  8. ↑ Giuseppe Rondinella (June 12, 2018). "Münchner Lufftaxi-Start-up holt ersten Marketingchef an Bord". horizont.net. Retrieved August 6, 2018.
  9. ↑ Lilium (August 6, 2018). "Simplicity was our Most Complicated Goal". lilium. Retrieved August 6, 2018.
  10. ↑ Peter Muender (2017-05-26). "Mit dem Auto über die Wolken (By car over the clouds)". Zeit. Retrieved 2018-08-06.
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