FeaturedNews

Lilium announces its first US vertiport hub location in Lake Nona, Orlando, Florida — set to open by 2025

Lil­i­um will launch its first ver­ti­port hub in Lake Nona, Orlan­do, Flori­da, by 2025 — con­nect­ing more than 20 mil­lion peo­ple with­in a 186-mile radius and serv­ing some of the state’s major cities.

Lake Nona is one of the fastest-grow­ing mas­ter-planned com­mu­ni­ties in the USA, and the Munich-based avi­a­tion com­pa­ny has part­nered with Tavi­s­tock Devel­op­ment Com­pa­ny and the City of Orlan­do to cre­ate the coun­try’s first urban and region­al air mobil­i­ty net­work. It will cre­ate more than 100 jobs in the area, with hun­dreds more oppor­tu­ni­ties expect­ed to fol­low across the state.

Dr. Remo Ger­ber, Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer of Lil­i­um, said: “We are thrilled to part­ner with Tavi­s­tock and build the first stretch of Florida’s high-speed elec­tric trans­porta­tion net­work with Cen­tral Flori­da at its core.

“It shows that region­al high-speed air mobil­i­ty can be built by pri­vate ini­tia­tive and give com­mu­ni­ties such as Lake Nona, which can also serve Orlan­do and arrivals from its inter­na­tion­al air­port, the abil­i­ty to deter­mine them­selves whether they want a link into a high-speed trans­porta­tion net­work.”

The Flori­da net­work forms part of Lilium’s vision of bring­ing region­al air mobil­i­ty to loca­tions across the globe. Lake Nona is sit­u­at­ed near Orlan­do Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, the orig­i­na­tion site of more than half of the region’s 75 mil­lion annu­al vis­i­tors, with a robust econ­o­my and infra­struc­ture ready to sup­port the US launch of elec­tric air mobil­i­ty.

The com­mu­ni­ty is also home to BBA Aviation/Signature Flight Sup­port and Sim­Com Avi­a­tion Train­ing, which recent­ly announced the cre­ation of its new glob­al head­quar­ters that will train approx­i­mate­ly 10,000 pilots each year.

Com­ment­ing on this part­ner­ship, City of Orlan­do May­or, Bud­dy Dyer, said: “For this new tech­nol­o­gy to tru­ly reshape the trans­porta­tion ecosys­tem and ben­e­fit Orlan­do res­i­dents long-term, it is going to take a true part­ner­ship between cities, devel­op­ers and trans­porta­tion oper­a­tors. We have been focused on find­ing the right part­ners to be a glob­al leader in the advanced air mobil­i­ty space.

“I’m thrilled that our pro­gres­sive and col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment has cre­at­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for this unique part­ner­ship between the City of Orlan­do, Lil­i­um and Lake Nona to invest in the expan­sion of safe, effi­cient and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly trans­porta­tion options through­out one of the fastest-grow­ing regions in the coun­try.”

Lil­i­um and Tavi­s­tock have togeth­er cre­at­ed a break­through ver­ti­port archi­tec­ture for its hub loca­tion that is both func­tion­al and aes­thet­i­cal­ly unique and resem­bles the icon­ic art with­in Lake Nona.

A vari­ety of stan­dard­ised ver­ti­port designs will allow flex­i­bil­i­ty so that sites can be unique­ly assem­bled or incor­po­rat­ed into exist­ing trans­port struc­tures in both urban and sub­ur­ban devel­op­ments. These designs pro­vide option­al­i­ty for met­ro­pol­i­tan land­scapes with the abil­i­ty for off­site pre-con­struc­tion that reduce costs and accel­er­ate devel­op­ment.

Dis­cussing the part­ner­ship, Tavi­s­tock Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Ben Weaver said: “We are delight­ed to part­ner with Lil­i­um to cre­ate the first US net­work of ver­ti­ports and to launch with­in Lake Nona’s liv­ing lab allow­ing unri­valed con­nec­tiv­i­ty unlike any­thing devel­oped in the coun­try to date.

“This part­ner­ship and net­work launch high­light our community’s pas­sion and com­mit­ment to ground­break­ing part­ner­ships and new tech­nolo­gies that sets us apart as a city of the future. Lilium’s core mis­sion of trans­port which not only sup­ports bring­ing the region togeth­er, but also pro­vides a solu­tion to envi­ron­men­tal issues, is incred­i­bly impres­sive.”

The ver­ti­port loca­tions are sub­ject to approval from the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA), Flori­da Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (FDOT) and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies. The Lil­i­um jet is under cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) and the FAA and will oper­ate under exist­ing reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works.

Avatar photo

Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

eVTOL Insights is part of the Industry Insights Group. Registered in the UK. Company No: 14395769