The small town of Weßling in Bavaria has a long history in the aerospace industry, so it’s fitting that it’s where Lilium set-up shop. Established by four university students in 2015, the group is now one of Europe’s leading eVTOL companies. Klaus Roewe is Lilium’s CEO.
We want to revolutionize aviation. Revolutionize means make it absolutely zero emission. We want to make a regional plane that has a decent transport capacity to have a meaningful effect on CO2 emission reduction.
And tell us a bit about Lilium's business model. We have lots of orders already from the premium market, but also from airline type of customers. We will start delivering the first one to two years into the so-called premium market.
But over time we will come out with a six-seater version wih higher density seating, lower operating costs per pax/kilometre and this is what we believe is 85% of the market afterwards. Lilium might be aiming to make its jet affordable, but for now costs are high. If you buy the premium version, it's about $9 million; the shuttle version is about $7 million.
Who will be driving, then, a Lilium jet? It can be flown by any certified, qualified pilot. You can start off being a helicopter pilot or fixed-wing pilot, and then you will have to do a so-called transition training into the Lilium jet, which takes about two weeks.
It's extremely easy to fly. Could I do it? You could definitively do it, you're looking like a pilot.
That was my cue to hop onboard. Klaus, these seats are quite comfy, interesting inside. What's the overall vision for the internal experience?
It will be very silent, so the internal noise level will be like in a high-class car, not comparable with helicopters at all. And for sure, then you can configure the aircraft as you like. So, you can basically customise everything you want.
What's the charging time like? Full recharge when you have flown the longest mission is about 45 minutes. So, if the battery was flat, almost?
It will never be really flat. So, the battery when you land and when you have basically emptied it, it will still have some 25 to 30% state of charge, because you need to hold reserves. Like when you land with a conventional aircraft, the tanks are never empty.
For more on the jet’s features and capabilities, I caught up with co-founder, Daniel Wiegard. So here we are in our 175,000 square foot manufacturing facility. Here we can do still dirty work, like drilling, etcetera, on the structure before we then later move into the final assembly line.
Right now, what is next to me here is our MSN1, our first production aircraft. It's the world's first electric jet airplane that is in commercial certification. And it also features the largest cabin in the vertical take-off and landing eVTOL segment.
How is this different from some of the other competitors on the market? Most of our peers are using propellers. These propellers have the advantage that they're a bit simpler to design and they need less power in take-off and landing but they're less efficient in the cruise flight.
So, since we are focused on regional flights, we have picked the jet technology because it yields longer range. Talk to me a bit about how these vehicles are powered. It is a lithium-ion battery with a high content of silicon in the anode, and this helps us to increase the power and the energy capability.
How many stages of testing typically do eVTOLs need to go through? Well, there is a number of testing stages, thousands of test points to be completed. So, you are starting to test on the very low component levels, such as a cell, for example, or a unit of the engine or compressor.
And then the last level is on the full aircraft, where you at first have ground testing, and then the full aircraft flight test. In 2019, Lilium was awarded one of the world’s most prestigious design accolades, the Red Dot Award. I caught up with Alberto Caruso, Head of Design and Brand.
Thank you for having CNBC here. What goes on here at the design studio? This is actually the mock-up area, so where we shape customer experience of our product.
So, you've got here a lot of physical models we are building up in real scale. And we've seen a few sketches behind us. What’s inspired the design choice for the Lilium jet?
It's a perfect combination of the best of both worlds from helicopter and jet. So, it's a really unique design, it's really something innovative. What are some of the materials that you're using on the jet?
The exterior is actually very high-tech materials. So, we are using a lot of carbon fibre to get really lightweight. Obviously the exterior can be customised with different liveries.
We're going to start with our branded livery, that more or less is going to look like this. It's a very high-tech fresh look. My time at Lilium nearly over, I couldn’t resist trying a fully immersive experience.
It feels pretty incredible. I'm not gonna lie, my heart's beating quite fast. I flew over some of London's landmarks I'm just gonna fly towards the Shard.
Piloted in the rain. Very realistic weather, that's for sure. And even spotted CNBC's offices.
There's Fleet Place! You've been in the aviation industry for three decades or so, how has the industry evolved, how is it evolving and what role is technology playing? There was a lot of efficiency gained by the structure, by the systems, notably by the engines, however you can see it's now coming to a kind of plateau so getting another 20-30% out in terms of CO2 production is very very difficult, so you have to make a leapfrog in terms of technology.
This could be hydrogen, it could be battery, electric, SAF, but SAF we know is not the ideal solution. The most radical solution is clearly what we are doing; that's why I'm here.
