Interview with Lilium’s Chief Technology Officer, Alastair McIntosh

Alas­tair McIn­tosh has an impres­sive back­ground. Before join­ing Lil­i­um in Decem­ber 2020 as the com­pa­ny’s CTO, he had worked at Rolls-Royce for over 33 years, start­ing as a design engi­neer, then mov­ing up the ranks to Chief Design Engi­neer and Chief Engi­neer fol­lowed by being appoint­ed in 2015 as a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Direc­tor of Engi­neer­ing & Tech­nol­o­gy and Chief Engi­neer of Busi­ness Avi­a­tion.

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Chris Stonor Asks The Ques­tions.

Recent­ly, you suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the first two ‘Design Organ­i­sa­tion­al Audits’ (DOA) for EASA. What is the time peri­od to com­plete the third and fourth ones?

To offer con­text, this process is EASA’s Part-21 Subpart‑J where we must demon­strate to the reg­u­la­tor the gen­er­al abil­i­ty of the Lil­i­um organ­i­sa­tion. To gain full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, as part of this process, you must prove to EASA, the pro­ce­dures and com­pe­ten­cies of the com­pa­ny to do the job.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, there are four audits. We are now half-way through this process. The first is about how the organ­i­sa­tion has been set up includ­ing the struc­ture that cov­ers safe­ty aspects, train­ing and abil­i­ties of the staff.

The sec­ond is look­ing at the core fun­da­men­tals like the design process, con­fig­u­ra­tion, man­age­ment as well as a more in-depth look at safe­ty. The third one which should be com­plet­ed by the end of this year, is focussed on a demon­stra­tion of com­pli­ance to the reg­u­la­tions like val­i­da­tion and ver­i­fi­ca­tion.

And the fourth and final process will come at the end of 2024 towards gain­ing full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. This runs par­al­lel with the gen­er­al pro­gram. Over­all, it shows EASA that your com­pa­ny is run­ning in a rig­or­ous and con­trolled man­ner.

The FAA has said recent­ly it is mod­i­fy­ing its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process for eVTOLs, some say, to make it more dif­fi­cult to gain full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Will this affect Lil­i­um?

Being Euro­pean-based, EASA is our pri­ma­ry reg­u­la­tor. We work close­ly with them. There is con­cur­rent val­i­da­tion through EASA with the FAA, a bi-lat­er­al avi­a­tion safe­ty agree­ment in-place, which we are a part of.

The two reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties approach is some­what dif­fer­ent. EASA from the out­set has intro­duced new and set reg­u­la­tions under the term SC-VTOL or Spe­cial Con­di­tion Ver­ti­cal Take-off and Land­ing. There is also a set for the elec­tric hybrid propul­sion sys­tems or SC E‑19. These two groups of reg­u­la­tions are dis­tinc­tive for EASA.

The FAA approach has tak­en each appli­cant on a case-by-case per­for­mance based on the Part-23 reg­u­la­tions for light air­craft and then added spe­cial con­di­tions rel­e­vant to the appli­cant.

In your view, which is the eas­i­est approach to gain full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion?

There are dif­fer­ent views. Both approach­es are very rig­or­ous. The FAA reg­u­la­tions are well-estab­lished, but recent­ly they’ve ques­tioned their appro­pri­ate­ness, espe­cial­ly around pow­er-lift sys­tems. More details about the pro­posed mod­i­fi­ca­tions must come out before we can see where the FAA are going with this. So it is dif­fi­cult to com­ment, but for Lil­i­um we remain with a clear approach from EASA. It is impor­tant in the ear­ly stages to have clar­i­ty and a strong agree­ment with the reg­u­la­tor you’re work­ing with.

Recent­ly, we sub­mit­ted a full set of our pro­posed means of com­pli­ance. This is cru­cial for any eVTOL com­pa­ny as it lays out the pro­gram ahead of you. For exam­ple, we have just com­plet­ed our pre­lim­i­nary design review and are pro­gress­ing through this.

Lil­i­um 7‑Seater Air­craft (Com­put­er Graph­ic)

Does the two DOAs cov­er the 7 seater Lil­i­um Jet?

It is an organ­i­sa­tion­al approval, there­fore it cov­ers all our air­craft. It asks the ques­tion, “is your organ­i­sa­tion fit for pur­pose?” This allows you to move for­ward with design, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, dif­fer­ent types of air­craft, in par­tic­u­lar, the five-seater we are bring­ing to mar­ket.

I note you’ve men­tioned bring­ing a 10 to 15 seater to mar­ket up-the-road?

We have a lot of flex­i­bil­i­ty with our cab­in con­fig­u­ra­tion and design. This is appeal­ing to the mar­ket and helped attract Net­Jets to sign an MOU with us. This cab­in flex­i­bil­i­ty can lead to either a four, five, six or even sev­en seater shut­tle or a four seater club cab­in arrange­ment. This is one of the advan­tages we have over the com­pe­ti­tion.

Last month you had 37 new patent appli­ca­tions pub­lished of which 70 per­cent con­cern ener­gy and propul­sion. Can you offer a few exam­ples?

It was great to put this infor­ma­tion into the pub­lic domain. Until you pro­tect your intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, you need to be guard­ed and, as a com­pa­ny, we like to be as trans­par­ent as pos­si­ble.

At the heart of our work is the propul­sion arrange­ment. The duct elec­tric vec­tor thrust sys­tem. This is key to our future suc­cess. Also, how we inte­grate our 30 engines with the flight con­trols. And then the bat­tery sys­tem itself and how we arrange this. So, we focus a lot on what is unique to Lil­i­um and how we can secure our future. There are more patents com­ing down the pipeline.

Of the 37, is there one that stands out for you?

It has to be the propul­sion sys­tem. This is real­ly quite unique giv­en the way it’s embed­ded into the air­craft. One sys­tem is quite sim­ple, but two are real enablers. We com­bine thrust and con­trol with­in the same unit. This is the big dif­fer­ence between us and our com­peti­tors. You tend to see open rotors in the mar­ket­place. Our sys­tem con­tains every­thing with­in the duct elec­tric fan. Even our flight con­trols and thrust reside with­in that one unit.

Is this how your pas­sen­ger cost per mile is cheap­er than your com­pe­ti­tion?. On record you have stat­ed USD2.25 cost per mile com­pared with between USD3 USD4 for your com­peti­tors? How can you achieve this low­er rate?

The pas­sen­ger cab­in capac­i­ty has a lot to do with this. Although, clear­ly since this num­ber was pub­lished the world has moved on. We’ve had the Covid pan­dem­ic. Now we are mov­ing into an inter­est­ing eco­nom­ic world with ris­ing infla­tion and the like. To repeat, it is down to the cab­in capac­i­ty. You need to speak with our busi­ness guys for a finan­cial update.

So your cab­in flex­i­bil­i­ty is the pri­ma­ry rea­son?

Exact­ly. It makes for bet­ter eco­nom­ics.

Mov­ing on to Spain and the ATLAS Flight Test Cen­tre in Vil­lacar­ril­lo, Jaen. You have been very active there in recent months with a series of tri­als. How have these tests been going and what lessons are you learn­ing?

They’ve been going real­ly well. We are super hap­py. We have been fly­ing almost every day. The focus has been on enve­lope expan­sion and fly­ing at high­er speeds. Going through the per­ceived dif­fi­cult flight phase, of tran­si­tion­ing from hov­er to for­ward flight. This has always been one of the trick­i­est areas to work with in ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing. The air­craft has behaved as expect­ed.

We reg­u­lar­ly put out on social media updates on our progress includ­ing videos, to keep our investors and fol­low­ers inter­est­ed. We have already flown 120 kilo­me­tres for­ward speed, and will keep increas­ing this. We are see­ing bet­ter lift on the main wing. That’s a crit­i­cal part. Mov­ing away from the pow­er lift to the for­ward flight. Above all, the craft is fly­ing very smooth­ly. There are no hic­cups. We are real­ly chuffed by the progress being made.

Lil­i­um’s ‘Phoenix 2’ Demon­stra­tor Pre­pares for Tri­als in Spain

Is the craft liv­ing up to expec­ta­tions?

Indeed. It is per­form­ing very very well. This par­tic­u­lar Phoenix 2 air­craft is a tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor, so we’ll keep push­ing the bound­aries and keep learn­ing from it, while val­i­dat­ing our mod­el­ling. Mean­while, the flight con­trols being test­ed are to become the cor­ner­stone of what we’ll be using for our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and pro­duc­tion air­craft. As I speak, the Phoenix 3 is in tran­sit to Spain for sum­mer tri­als.

Sum up where Lil­i­um is right now.

Today, it is about the pro­gres­sion of the pro­duc­tion design and mov­ing towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. More impor­tant­ly, it is soon about releas­ing the design def­i­n­i­tion to our man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ners. This is quite sig­nif­i­cant. That allows us to progress to the first pro­to­type which we should see at the back end of 2023. This paves the way to 2024 and a flight test pro­gram that will last between 15 and 18 months lead­ing to full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial flights in 2025.

Lil­i­um is steadi­ly matur­ing and pro­gress­ing whether it is our bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy or flight con­trol. Our 700+ team are doing a mag­nif­i­cent job. They are a great bunch of diverse and tal­ent­ed peo­ple.

Lil­i­um is in great shape mov­ing into the future.

(Pics: Lil­i­um)