Lilium starts assembly of Lilium Jet electric propulsion system

Lil­i­um announced ear­li­er this week that it is start­ing assem­bly of the Lil­i­um Jet’s ‘rev­o­lu­tion­ary’ elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem at its ded­i­cat­ed facil­i­ty next to its head­quar­ters in Wessling, Ger­many. The announce­ment con­firms Lilium’s roadmap towards achiev­ing its first manned flight in late 2024.

Yves Yem­si, COO of Lil­i­um, said: “The start of propul­sion assem­bly rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step towards indus­tri­al­is­ing the Lil­i­um Jet. In the com­ing weeks we will be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly work­ing towards val­i­dat­ing our man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties and prepar­ing to deliv­er the propul­sion units for ini­tial air­craft inte­gra­tion and type-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion test­ing.”

Klaus Roewe, CEO of Lil­i­um, added: “The icon­ic, sleek air­craft design is a key dif­fer­en­tia­tor of the Lil­i­um Jet. Thanks to the unique propul­sion sys­tem and aero­dy­nam­ic jet archi­tec­ture, I believe the Lil­i­um Jet will set the bench­mark for the eVTOL indus­try.

“95% of com­mer­cial aero­planes today use jet engines, which offer high safe­ty in addi­tion to the best cab­in expe­ri­ence with low vibra­tion and noise, com­bined with great pay­load and range poten­tial.”

Daniel Wie­gand, Lil­i­um Co-Founder and Chief Engi­neer, con­tin­ued: “The start of indus­tri­al assem­bly of the Lil­i­um Jet’s propul­sion unit marks a spe­cial moment. It was our shared belief in the rad­i­cal poten­tial of our elec­tric jet tech­nol­o­gy that formed the nucle­us of our com­pa­ny.”

In the first phase of assem­bly, the propul­sion system’s rotat­ing parts, includ­ing the shaft, mag­nets and tita­ni­um com­pres­sor fan are assem­bled and mat­ed with the asso­ci­at­ed sta­t­ic com­po­nents such as the e‑motor sta­tor and guide vanes (for struc­tur­al sup­port and cool­ing).

These are then inte­grat­ed into the engines, which will be inte­grat­ed into the Lil­i­um Jet’s propul­sion mount­ing sys­tem, the unique flap struc­ture that forms the rear part of the wings and front canards and that hous­es the propul­sion and vec­tor­ing sys­tems respon­si­ble for ver­ti­cal and hor­i­zon­tal flight.

The start of assem­bly fol­lows exten­sive test­ing of propul­sion sub­sys­tems deliv­ered by sup­pli­ers: the cus­tom-designed air­craft e‑motor, devel­oped and built in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Den­so and Hon­ey­well; the tita­ni­um com­pres­sor fan, devel­oped and built in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Aeron­am­ic; and elec­tric motor bear­ings built in col­lab­o­ra­tion with SKF.

In July this year, Lil­i­um com­plet­ed test­ing of a full-size pro­to­type Lil­i­um Jet fan and sta­tor at Jetpel’s facil­i­ties, one of Germany’s lead­ing avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy cen­tres, which con­firmed the fan design’s robust oper­at­ing para­me­ters.

Addi­tion­al­ly, test­ing has start­ed on a pro­to­type e‑motor, for its mechan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal, and ther­mal per­for­mance. The Lil­i­um Jet e‑motor has been designed to deliv­er a pow­er den­si­ty of over 100 kW from a sys­tem weigh­ing just over 4 kg.