Lilium: Tesla Of The Air and The First Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing Plane
Soon there will be a personal craft that can take off and land vertically. It will be electric and seat two people, and is the starting point for what is hoped will be a generation of environmentally friendly and quiet planes.
Soon there will be a personal craft that can take off and land vertically. It will be electric and seat two people, and is the starting point for what is hoped will be a generation of environmentally friendly and quiet planes. CEO Daniel Wiegand wants the plane to be suitable for daily use as an airport is not needed.
Lilium – the company involved – has been in business since February 2015 and consists of 4 doctoral students and engineers who are based at the University of Munich. 25kg prototypes have been successful, and a next step is a full-size plane.
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If the aircraft works, it will join other forms of public aviation, but without the need to travel to a distant airport. Noise will not be a problem, and a runway is not necessary. There will be the benefit of a helicopter and none of the problems. If a back garden is big enough to hold the craft, then that is the place that will be used for take-off and landing. It will only need to be 15m x 15m. It will be safer than a helicopter and much more quite due to the fact that it is electric.
The official classification will be Light Sports Aircraft for use by two and to fly the plane; the pilot needs to be at least 20 hours trained. There are some limitations as it is expected to be used for leisure flights when the weather is good and flying at 3km altitude in clear skies.
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Rachel Kowalski
Rachel Kowalski is the Cybersecurity Analyst at TrendinTech, where she covers vulnerabilities, ransomware, supply chain attacks, nation-state operations and the security rules shaping organizations in the United States and Europe. Before moving into journalism she worked as a threat intelligence analyst at a security vendor and later reported for CyberScoop and the security desk at Wired, covering the SolarWinds compromise and the ransomware wave that hit hospitals and pipelines. Rachel holds a Master of Science in Cybersecurity from the Georgia Institute of Technology and attends Black Hat and DEF CON in Las Vegas each year, where she follows research from the security community. She writes to make risks and countermeasures understandable to people who are not specialists.
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