German startup Lilium has completed the maiden flight of its all-electric air-taxi, a five-seater VTOL tiltjet capable of covering 300km in 60 minutes.
Known as the Lilium Jet, the prototype aircraft is powered by 36 electric jet engines. The main wings house 24 engines, while a smaller wing bank at the front of the plane is home to the remaining 12. Maximum power output of 2,000 horsepower is available for take-off and landing, but Lilium claims less than 10 per cent of this will be required for cruising flight. The air-taxi has no tail, no rudder, no propellers, no gearbox and just one moving part in each engine.
Founded in Munich in 2015, Lilium has attracted more than $100m in venture capital. In 2017 it unveiled a two-seater electric VTOL aircraft that served as a proof-of-concept for the Lilium Jet. After extensive ground testing, the latest iteration performed its maiden flight in Munich on May 4th, controlled remotely from the ground. This first test saw the vehicle hover in place just a few feet off the ground, with transition flight and cruise testing to come further down the line. With a projected range of 300km, the air-taxi will be four times faster than a ground taxi, yet competitive on price, according to its creators.
“Today we are taking another huge step towards making urban air mobility a reality,” said Daniel Wiegand, co-founder and CEO of Lilium. “In less than two years we have been able to design, build and successfully fly an aircraft that will serve as our template for mass production. Moving from two to five seats was always our ambition as it enables us to open up the skies to many more travellers. Whether its friends or families flying together or business travellers ride-sharing into the city, having five seats delivers an economy of scale you just can’t achieve with two.”
Lilium is pushing an aggressive timeline for the introduction of its on-demand air-taxi service, saying it expects to be fully-operational in numerous cities around the world by 2025, with trial services coming online earlier. It remains to be seen if airspace regulations and infrastructure will accommodate that ambitious target, but with competitors like Uber also investing heavily in the sector, air-taxis could soon become a feature in our urban skies.
Unless aerial “traffic” is solved successfully, this extraordinary development wil present many practical problems. Eventually, most of them can be handled, but it still will face the same difficulty of (attempted) autonomous cars, but in 3D! (or 6 degrees of freedom).
Aerodynamically, this concept appears very advantageous, as large multirotor drones have shown that stability, maneuvering and power to weight ratio are favourable and achievable, but as size and weight go up, the electrical system complexity and challenges go even higher (ask any aeromodeler that has tried to build really large electrical models). We hope they succeed and complete full testing without any mishap. The transition between hover and level flight and back to hover is not an easy task.
A little more technical detail would be appreciated by us engineers, like fan diameters, number of lithium cells, total weight vs carrying weight etc.
Has anyone asked what type of battery they are using, that can apparently supply 1492 KW for takeoff?, and more to the point, how much it weighs? A nickel zinc to provide this power would weigh approx 500kg, I wonder if this is an excercise in gathering venture capital for a project that will run and run? I also wonder if this is why it was tested sans pilot?
The company isn’t saying anything about the batteries at the moment, but we’re watching with interest.
Interesting concept and brilliantexecutionthat could maybe compete with helicopters but :-
“the air-taxi will be four times faster than a ground taxi, yet competitive on price” seems quite optimistic given the need for a licensed pilot plus the high capital cost plus the need for exchange battery packs or time delays for charging to allow a decent time utilisation.
It runs on smoke, since if any one motor fails, they always leak smoke! Seriously, this thing may be set up to run on ultra capacitors, who knows? Super fast charging at each stop sounds about right, with very short hops, but wait, they did state a projected range of 300 Km, so there must be some Li+ battery, or perhaps new Lithium-sulfur batteries on board. No pilot, probably programmed to safely land on emergency power.
Brilliant development and progress, but the aggressive timeline seems unrealistic.
They may receive approval to share the airspace by 2025, but not being fully operational in miltiple cities. CAA will need to set aside hundreds of hours to review before any approval will be granted.