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Lilium and Customcells ramps up silicon anode battery cell production for its type-conforming eVTOL aircraft

Lil­i­um and bat­tery cell pro­duc­tion part­ner Cus­tom­cells are ramp­ing up the pro­duc­tion of Lilium’s high sil­i­con con­tent cells, with week­ly deliv­er­ies from Cus­tom­cells pro­duc­tion line in Tübin­gen, Ger­many. 

The pro­duc­tion line will deliv­er thou­sands of cells annu­al­ly and is on track to meet avi­a­tion stan­dards for trace­abil­i­ty and process con­trol using a com­bi­na­tion of stan­dard cell pro­duc­tion process­es and a pre-lithi­a­tion process for high sil­i­con con­tent cells.

Fol­low­ing their ini­tial part­ner­ship announce­ment in 2021, Cus­tom­cells and Lil­i­um are now suc­cess­ful­ly lever­ag­ing a pre-lithi­a­tion process that the com­pa­nies are fur­ther indus­tri­al­is­ing towards vol­ume pro­duc­tion. The pre-lithi­a­tion process, a key advan­tage for enabling greater ener­gy and pow­er den­si­ty, inserts addi­tion­al lithi­um to com­pen­sate for the loss of lithi­um dur­ing the first cycle.

Lil­i­um part­ners with Ion­blox for its exclu­sive sil­i­con anode cell tech­nol­o­gy that allows for greater ener­gy and pow­er den­si­ty com­bined with high cycle life.

Dirk Aben­droth, CEO Cus­tom­cells Group said: “The mul­ti-year devel­op­ment col­lab­o­ra­tion between Lil­i­um and Cus­tom­cells has been suc­cess­ful: togeth­er we have proven the fea­si­bil­i­ty of mass pro­duc­tion of high-per­for­mance lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies for eVTOL jets. Now we are automat­ing our pro­duc­tion step by step towards large quan­ti­ties.”

This announce­ment fol­lows recent test results from a third-par­ty inde­pen­dent lab­o­ra­to­ry which report­ed 88 per cent ener­gy reten­tion — well above the tar­get­ed 80 per cent tar­get – in Ionblox’s full-size pro­to­type bat­tery cells being devel­oped for the Lil­i­um Jet after 800 charg­ing cycles with 100 per cent depth of dis­charge (1C/1C cycles).

Fur­ther­more, Cus­tom­cells’ pro­duc­tion trace­abil­i­ty will enable Lil­i­um to meet avi­a­tion stan­dards and sup­port pro­duc­tion cer­ti­fi­ca­tion needs by deliv­er­ing process-lev­el and cell-lev­el data to Lil­i­um.

Yves Yem­si, COO at Lil­i­um, added: “An impor­tant moment on Lilium’s march towards indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion, we are pleased to share the progress we are mak­ing with CUSTOMCELLS.”

Lil­i­um remains on track to start pro­duc­tion of its type-con­form­ing air­craft lat­er this year and plans for first manned flight of the type-con­form­ing air­craft in the sec­ond half of 2024.

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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.

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