In autumn 2019, Lars Reinhold, editor-in-chief of the specialist magazine “Aerokurier”, received an email. The sender: an engineer who wishes to remain anonymous. Calculations for the Lilium jet are included in the appendix. His conclusion is devastating: the promises of the Munich air taxi startup have been “exposed beyond any doubt as not being realizable,” he writes in his concept paper. Is that correct?
Reinhold begins to research. A few months later, the specialist magazine published its criticism under the title “Lilium’s Illusion World”. It casts doubt on Lilium’s technology and the startup’s core promise: an electric flying machine that should take off and land vertically like a helicopter, but glide efficiently like an airplane in flight. In this way, several people should be able to cover regional routes quickly and emission-free.
Listen to all our research in Part 4 of our podcast “Cashburners: The Lilium Story”:
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Doubts about great promises
The anonymous engineer calculated whether the concept was plausible based on publicly available information and his own estimates. His criticism was primarily aimed at three points: the rotor drive, the high energy requirement for vertical take-off and the limited energy density of the batteries. From his point of view, it didn’t add up. Instead of the range of around 300 kilometers promised by Lilium, it came to 18 kilometers, a fraction of that.
