Middle East: Further Information on Lilium’s 100 eVTOL Jet Order from Saudia Airlines “at Press Conference Next Week”

Ger­man-based air taxi devel­op­er, Lil­i­um, has invit­ed the media to a spe­cial press con­fer­ence at its HQ near Munich on Thurs­day, July 18th, where the eVTOL com­pa­ny will offer fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the frame­work of its deal with Saudia Air­lines, reports Reuters. Lil­i­um first announced news of a poten­tial pur­chase of 100 Jets by Saudia back in Octo­ber 2022.

Reuters says Lil­i­um has turned the orig­i­nal pro­pos­al into “some­thing more con­crete.” While the Ger­man com­pa­ny has declined to com­ment, the invite has told reporters, “You will wit­ness an impor­tant con­tract sign­ing.”

This is one of Lilium’s biggest orders to date, amidst its poten­tial pur­chase pipeline of over 780 air­craft. These include firm agree­ments from Urban­Link and eVolare. The first manned flight of its Jet is sched­uled for the end of the year.

Saudia Air­lines Announces Plan to Pur­chase 100 Lil­i­um Jets, Col­lab­o­rates to Bring Elec­tric Air Mobil­i­ty to Sau­di Ara­bia

The company’s recent achieve­ments include:-

: A suc­cess­ful­ly con­clud­ed fundraise lead­ing to USD114m gross pro­ceeds. 

: Bat­tery pack pro­duc­tion start­ing at Lilium’s pur­pose-built bat­tery facil­i­ty.  

: Expand­ed sup­port net­work in key mar­kets col­lab­o­rat­ing with Aéro­ports de la Côte d’Azur and UrbanV for Lil­i­um Jet flights to the French Riv­iera, Atlantic Avi­a­tion assist­ing US-wide Lil­i­um Jet oper­a­tions. 

: Lil­i­um sign­ing a part­ner­ship agree­ment with the Shen­zhen based Bao’an Dis­trict. Under this arrange­ment, Lil­i­um has estab­lished its region­al HQ in the region by way of a recent­ly cre­at­ed Chi­nese pres­ence, mean­ing “Pow­er­ful Wing”. 

Klaus Roewe, CEO of Lil­i­um, com­ment­ed, “Our focus is on the deliv­ery of key pro­gram mile­stones such as the start of pro­duc­tion of our avi­a­tion-grade bat­tery packs achieved in April.”

He con­tin­ued, “Our engi­neer­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing teams are cur­rent­ly work­ing full speed to achieve the first manned flight of the Lil­i­um Jet, tar­get­ed for the end of 2024.” Adding, “We will be keep­ing the mar­ket abreast of pro­gram progress over the course of the year.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://lilium.com

https://www.saudia.com

(Top image: Lil­i­um)

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