Many different subscale aircraft were tested first, and different design variants were studied where the wings would fold forward, so that the aircraft could be driven as a VTOL and recharge in only few hours from a standard 240 V electrical outlet. A first half-scale demonstrator, Falcon, flew in 2015. The unmanned first flight of the two-seat Eagle full size prototype was on 20 April 2017 at the Mindelheim-Mattsies airfield, Bavaria, Germany. The five-seat unmanned Lilium Jet is flight tested at Oberpfaffenhofen airfield near Munich. By October 2019, after 100 flights, it was transitioned from vertical to horizontal flight, reaching over, but not yet fully horizontal. It managed 25° banked turns, high ascent/descent rates like in operations, hover turns and sideward translations. Electrical, fan and flap failures were mitigated by the electrical and flight control systems. The company employs around 350 people in Munich and expects to create around 500 jobs by 2025. In July 2019, Lilium announced London, UK as its base to develop its software engineering team. The engineering team is led by Carlos Morgado, former chief technology officer of Just Eat. Lilum announced the completion of its first manufacturing facility in October 2019. The same month, the Lilium five-seater Jet received a Red Dot Award: Design Concept for “Best of the Best”. The first prototype was destroyed by fire during maintenance on 27 February 2020. A second partially-constructed prototype was undamaged.
Design
The Lilium Jet is planned as a five-seater aircraft. It is powered by 36 electric motors with six of them on each of the two front wings and twelve on each rear wing. Additionally to the fixed part of the wings, the propellers and engines are each installed in twelve tiltable wing parts. They are referred to by the manufacturer in analogy to Landing flaps as flaps. The drive-carrying "flaps" are pivoted downwards for vertical launch. At the transition in the horizontal position, a forward thrust is generated. This is energetically much more economical than the lift by pure rotorcraft. The five-seat Lilium Jet targets a range of, its 36 electric ducted fans are powered by a lithium-ion battery, less than are required to cruise.
Specifications
The technical data is for the two-seater from the early phase of 2016.
Usage
The Lilium GmbH plans to found an air taxi service for urban air mobility with the Lilium Jet. The company expects that pilots will be needed for around 10 years until autonomous flights can take over.
