Lilium Jet - A futuristic flying luxury car

The king of smooth

I’ve been watching Lilium for a LONG TIME. Feels like forever. Maybe it really hasn’t been that long, but it’s hard not to see why I’m so anxious for this vehicle to come out.

The Lilium Jet sports 30? ducted fan thrusters - meaning super redundant, super safe. I counted them to make sure I was correct (but correct me if I’m wrong)

The Lilium Jet is also beautiful - (again the black and white airframe give the Apple sleek look) and the proprietary technology is Ducted Electric Vectored Thrust (DEVT). The ducted fans integrated into the wing flaps provide advantages in payload, aerodynamic efficiency and a lower noise profile, whilst also providing thrust vector control to manoeuvre the Lilium Jet through every phase of flight.

Now, knowing what I know of ducted fans - they aren’t very efficient compared to a standard rotor or prop. On a ducted fan jet, for instance, you’ll get much less airtime than a single prop plane on the same battery. I’m very interested in what Lilium has up their sleeve for powering all these fans. They must have re-engineered the crap out of their propulsion units to get them to be more efficient than typical ducted fans.

And this is cool - possibly something I’ve not seen before in other eVTOLS and flying cars, different seat configurations, depending on the use or need.

Lilium is one of the only eVTOL makers to seek dual certification with EASA and FAA. From that statement, it seems there is no final certification as of yet - but I assume they have great things on the horizon as they have former Managing Director of Rolls-Royce Germany at the helm. (that also sounds very expensive)

That FAA update: https://lilium.com/newsroom-detail/faa-issues-g-1-for-lilium-jet

Some inspiring words from Alastair McIntosh (The Rolls guy), CTO about Lilium:

‘At the beginning of December 2020, I joined Lilium as Chief Technology Officer. Prior to joining, I was Chief Engineer and Managing Director at Rolls-Royce Germany. In my career I have been responsible for delivering a number of world leading turbofan jet engine programmes including the BR725 for the Gulfstream G650 and the Trent XWB for the Airbus A350. Like many other aerospace engineers who joined Lilium before me, I was curious as to how Lilium’s technology would really perform in practice. At first glance, it certainly appeared tricky for Lilium’s ambitious architecture to achieve the stated mission profile. For example, it appeared to me that the associated fan size and power consumption implications of electric ducted jet engines might make such an architecture impractical, or at least economically non-viable in an eVTOL aircraft given the thrust required for take-off.

I reviewed this technology and architecture in detail as part of my due diligence. I found it to be technically sound and genuinely impressive and now as part of the team, I have seen much of the innovative technology, analysis and, importantly, test data that underwrites the concept. To share some of that insight, this blog lays out the core elements of the Lilium architecture and the principal technical arguments as to why this architecture is powerful when applied to the aircraft mission profile. Where possible, I have also addressed common misconceptions regarding the aircraft architecture.

It is fair to say that the team at Lilium have been keeping their heads down, quietly getting on with things. Going forward, our sincere hope is to be more transparent (sensitive IP notwithstanding) about our technological progress and design thinking. The goal of this blog and updates to come, is to invite a wider audience from the aerospace and high-technology communities into the conversation. Hopefully this is also the beginning of making these exciting technologies more accessible for everyone.’

Very good Alastair - we are looking forward to this roll out as much as you are.

Link: https://lilium.com/