Lilium: “A Sad Sad Situation…”

The Lil­i­um sto­ry is “get­ting more and more absurd.” How ter­ri­ble for the eVTOL staff who have expe­ri­enced an emo­tion­al roller­coast­er since Christ­mas.

First, the com­pa­ny went into bank­rupt­cy and the 750 employ­ees were laid off just days before Xmas. Then on Christ­mas Eve it was announced that finan­cial back­ers, Mobile Uplift Cor­po­ra­tion (MUC), a com­pa­ny set up by an expe­ri­enced con­sor­tium of investors from Europe and North Amer­i­ca, had stepped for­ward promis­ing an ini­tial EUR200 mil­lion to save the Ger­man com­pa­ny. And now the indus­try learns this promise has been dashed and Lil­i­um is insol­vent again for the sec­ond time in just two months.

Last Minute Res­cue: “New Year Cheer for Lil­i­um as eVTOL Com­pa­ny Finds Investor”

Last week trou­ble ahead was flagged, when news broke that Lil­i­um staff had set up a GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/lilium-employees-dont-get-paid-for-almost-2-months-now . Only EUR1,515 had been raised before the cam­paign was closed down with the UPDATE: “…the num­ber of peo­ple who signed up for help are low (10 peo­ple so far) and the cur­rent amount could already help them to pay the most nec­es­sary.”

Charles Alcock, MD of AIN Media Group, post­ed on LinkedIn, “eVTOL doubters will get buried in debates over tech­no­log­i­cal plus­es and minus­es at these advanced air mobil­i­ty pio­neers, but there is no doubt­ing the sin­cer­i­ty of their com­mit­ment and the blood, sweat and tears they put into try­ing to trans­form avi­a­tion.”

In an AIN arti­cle Alcock explains, “For rea­sons that have yet to be explained, the fund­ing nev­er mate­ri­alised from the investors includ­ing Ger­man start-up back­ers Chris­t­ian Reber, Jens Beck­ers and Frank The­len.”

But Ger­man media web­site, electrive.com, is able to shed light on the sit­u­a­tion.

It wrote last week, “By mid-Feb­ru­ary, things were look­ing dire for Lil­i­um… again. Employ­ees were still wait­ing to be paid their salaries from the month pri­or, and share­hold­er Frank The­len admit­ted that the com­pa­ny was burn­ing through EUR10 mil­lion per month just to han­dle oper­at­ing expens­es.”

The arti­cle con­tin­ues, “Now, new rev­e­la­tions show that the promised fund­ing was not exact­ly what had been announced: ‘Despite all our efforts, the advanced financ­ing options that were sup­posed to secure your salary pay­ments and the future of Lil­i­um have unfor­tu­nate­ly come to noth­ing,’ Lil­i­um wrote in an email to employ­ees.”

Hence, the GoFundMe page.

Accord­ing to the Ger­man busi­ness pub­li­ca­tion Man­ag­er Mag­a­zin, the ‘Mobile Uplift Cor­po­ra­tion’ was not backed by the announced con­sor­tium of investors at all. “The mon­ey, accord­ing to a secret plan, was to come main­ly from some­one else: Mar­i­an Boček, a Slo­va­kian entre­pre­neur and head of the bat­tery com­pa­ny Ino­Bat,” says the pub­li­ca­tion.

Boček had repeat­ed­ly held out the prospect of a short-term pay­ment of the urgent­ly expect­ed EUR150 mil­lion, but this mon­ey appar­ent­ly nev­er mate­ri­alised.

Mar­i­an Boček (Cred­it: Prav­da, Ivan Majer­ský)

Ger­man busi­ness paper Wirtschaftswoche sug­gest­ed, “Boček is only a trustee and may not have the nec­es­sary cap­i­tal him­self. The only thing that is cer­tain is that the Ino­bat founder did not trans­fer the instal­ments, despite claims to the con­trary in recent weeks, pos­si­bly because ‘he is also wait­ing for the mon­ey from his financier,’” accord­ing to the paper.

What a mess! A straight-for­ward case of smoke and mir­rors.

This led to Lil­i­um Aero­space (the new com­pa­ny name) releas­ing a state­ment late last week, “While talks about alter­na­tive solu­tions are still ongo­ing, the chance for restruc­tur­ing right now is high­ly unlike­ly and there­fore oper­a­tions will be stopped. Giv­en the sit­u­a­tion, this is deeply regret­ful for all employ­ees and Lil­i­um Aero­space thanks them for their resilience and ded­i­ca­tion.”

The talk­ing appears to be over bar­ring a mir­a­cle.

(Top image: Lil­i­um eVTOL Dis­play at Farn­bor­ough Air­show, 2024 — cred­it: Lil­i­um)

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