First high voltage electrical harnesses roll off the line for the all-electric Lilium Jet

Lilium’s first high-volt­age elec­tri­cal har­ness­es for its Jet have been com­plet­ed on the path to first assem­bly, indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion, and entry into ser­vice. The har­ness sys­tem has been opti­mised for high per­for­mance at low weight enabling over 900V.

Col­lab­o­rat­ing with its design and build part­ner for elec­tri­cal wiring inte­gra­tion GKN Aero­space, and con­nec­tor sup­pli­er Rosen­berg­er, the har­ness­es rep­re­sent a crit­i­cal sys­tem on the Lil­i­um Jet, for which Lil­i­um has been grant­ed patents in the US and Europe.

Essen­tial for the Lil­i­um Jet’s safe­ty crit­i­cal pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion archi­tec­ture, an elec­tri­cal har­ness is a sys­tem of cables bun­dled into a sin­gle secure pro­tec­tive sleeve to opti­mise space and sim­pli­fy instal­la­tion.

Designed for safe­ty and redun­dan­cy, the har­ness­es will act as the aircraft’s main elec­tri­cal arter­ies, dis­trib­ut­ing pow­er from the ten bat­ter­ies, locat­ed on the sides of the fuse­lage, to the jet propul­sion units, embed­ded into the aircraft’s main wings and canards.

Yves Yem­si, COO of Lil­i­um, com­ment­ed: “We are delight­ed with the progress made in build­ing this sec­tion of the elec­tri­cal wiring sys­tem. Today’s mile­stone again con­firms our approach of part­ner­ing with estab­lished aero­space sup­pli­ers for an effi­cient air­craft devel­op­ment pro­gram.”

John Pritchard, pres­i­dent of civ­il air­frame at GKN Aero­space added: “This col­lab­o­ra­tion has enabled us to lever­age and build on the capa­bil­i­ties of each com­pa­ny.

“We are proud that our elec­tri­cal wiring sys­tems tech­nol­o­gy, our design exper­tise and our abil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture at scale is help­ing Lil­i­um make sus­tain­able region­al avi­a­tion a real­i­ty.”

Marc Käum­le, exec­u­tive VP for Rosen­berg­er said: “Elec­tric avi­a­tion is on its way, and we are pleased to be a part of it. We have been design­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing con­nec­tors and cable assem­blies over many years for a vari­ety of avi­a­tion appli­ca­tions. We look for­ward to extend­ing our capa­bil­i­ties into the eVTOL space as part of the Lil­i­um Jet team.”

Last month, Lil­i­um announced it had start­ed 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.

Lil­i­um starts assem­bly of Lil­i­um Jet elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem