Lilium's seven-seater looks cool, but critics think current battery technology could limit the aircraft's potential as a regional commuter.
Lilium also announced a partnership with one of the earliest backers of helicopters, Bristow Group, to develop a maintenance program for when its aircraft enters into service.
The recent announcements were good timing for Lilium, which has received ongoing criticism for both the design of its aircraft and its decision last March to push back type-certification by 12 months to 2025. At the time, then-CEO Wiegand said Lilium plans to build the first production-conforming aircraft for the EASA certification process in 2023.
One of the key issues for the new generation of electric aircraft is efficiency—even the best batteries don’t store much power for their weight. But adding more batteries into an eVTOL to supplement lifting ability requires more power to carry the extra weight of the bigger batteries. That is a vicious circle that Lilium says its prototypes will avoid with new battery technologies.
Lilium’s solution includes 36 small electric fans that it calls “jets” that are distributed across four wings. They swivel in banks to provide both vertical and horizontal thrust. The fans also have individual flaps to vector the thrust. Its wings mean that power consumption in forward flight is just a tenth of that required for moving vertically.
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