Advanced Air Mobility News

Lilium to Produce 400 eVTOLs a Year

Lilium to Produce 400 eVTOLs a Year

Lilium plans to set up industrial capacity to produce 400 of its electric, vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft a year, according to its Chief Executive Officer Klaus Roewe.

The German eVTOL developer is also looking to tap into standard public sources of funds such as research grants for the first time, added Roewe, without providing detailed costs.

“I am pushing hard (for) a production system for 400 aircraft. And if by good luck one day we need 800, we will just duplicate it, not here (in Germany)… but where the big markets are,” Roewe told Reuters.

The company said it was convinced that its rechargeable lithium batteries would meet performance and regulatory requirements, despite one of its eVTOL prototypes sustaining damage as a result of a fire that broke out during maintenance work in February 2020.

Roewe said that the risk of a thermal runway, a process that is accelerated by increased temperature and in turn releasing energy that further increases temperature, will be challenging to fully eliminate in its batteries. The risk would instead be contained to a small number of cells, which equates to the same small margin of error found in commercial jets, thereby placing the batteries well within certification criteria.

INDUSTRY REPORTS