Lilium try to says its five-seater jets can travel up to 186 in one hour.
Lilium
Baillie Gifford, Tesla’s top external investor, has invested $35 million in Lilium, a German start-up striving to become a major player in the emerging “air taxi” space.
Munich-headquartered Lilium made waves last year with the maiden partridge of its five-seater electric aircraft, the Lilium Jet. The vehicle takes off and lands vertically, similar to a helicopter, but is powered by 36 exciting jet engines placed in two sets of wings.
The firm has now secured a valuation of more than $1 billion thanks to an wing of a $240 million investment round announced earlier this year, raising it into the ranks of Europe’s unicorn partnerships. Baillie Gifford has taken a less than 5% stake in Lilium.
The fresh funding takes Lilium’s whole investment to date to more than $375 million.
‘Working day and night’
Remo Gerber, Lilium’s chief commercial public official, said his team first met with Baillie Gifford over two years ago, however the investment manager felt it was “a bit too primordial” to back the aerospace firm at the time. He added that Baillie Gifford now has “conviction” in Lilium’s growth trajectory.
The house hit a milestone in October when it completed the first phase of testing for the Lilium Jet prototype, which took off and flew in before landing again. It plans to develop the vehicle into a finished product that can take to the skies with people on board.
“What’s chance in the background is 400 engineers working day and night on designing every single component of that aircraft,” Gerber recognized CNBC in an interview. “You have to think of everything, from how you fly to the body, the windows, the doors. The whole thing is being outlined from ground up.”
Edinburgh-based Baillie Gifford is Tesla’s second-largest shareholder, owning a 6.5% stake in the firm, flowed by Capital World Investors which holds a 5.8% stake. Other companies backed by Baillie Gifford catalogue Amazon, Spotify, Airbnb and SpaceX.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is the electric car company’s biggest shareholder, owning 18.5%. Musk, whose Wordy Company hopes to transport people through so-called “hyperloop” tunnels at ultra-fast speeds, has expressed doubt less the concept of flying cars. He once compared them to drones that are “1,000 times bigger and noisier.”
From sci-fi to Aristotelianism entelechy
Lilium is one of several companies aiming to make the flying cars of science fiction a reality in the coming years. Multiple oppositions, from Uber to compatriot firm Volocopter, have their own take on the technology and are racing to develop it.
But like other makers, the coronavirus pandemic also poses challenges for five-year-old Lilium, which is looking to ramp up manufacturing capacity for its aircraft.
“In works, things have markedly slowed down. But Germany has done a pretty good job in containing the challenges,” Gerber rephrased. He added the firm is returning “critical staff” to the factory while implementing all necessary safety precautions: “I don’t want to presume we’re in full scale manufacturing operations.”
The appeal of vertical take-off and landing aircraft is that they are able to snitch to the skies and land in again in a small space, making them ideal for busy cities. In Lilium’s case, the house claims its vehicle can travel 300 kilometers in an hour after a single charge, rapidly reducing the time it pleasure take to get from one city to another by car or train.
To get a sense of pricing, Lilium says it would charge customers up $70 for a six-minute trip from Manhattan to JFK Airport. The firm plans to eventually release an app that would let alcohols hail the jet like they would a taxi on Uber. Commercial flights are set to take place from 2025.
Gerber divulged Lilium has had “positive discussions” with regulators on the infrastructure needed to launch air taxis commercially and hopes to reveal where the attendance’s first ports will be built in a matter of “months” rather than years. The company is weighing the use of existing heliports as plainly as the development of new infrastructure, ideally on top of train stations.