Lilium chooses Expliseat to design and build the seat for its eVTOL aircraft

Lil­i­um has cho­sen French man­u­fac­tur­er Expliseat to design and build the pilot and pas­sen­ger seats for its jet.

Expliseat spe­cialis­es in light­weight and durable seat­ing for avi­a­tion and oth­er low car­bon trans­port, and has exper­tise in advanced mate­ri­als such as car­bon fibre and tita­ni­um, which makes their seats about 35 per cent lighter than those typ­i­cal­ly made of alu­mini­um.

This weight sav­ing is the result of an ultra light frame where com­fort is not sac­ri­ficed, with the mass saved par­tial­ly reas­signed to addi­tion­al cush­ions and enhanced ergonom­ics to pro­vide an opti­mal expe­ri­ence for the Lil­i­um Jet’s pas­sen­gers. 

Low­er seat mass con­tributes to more effi­cient and sus­tain­able avi­a­tion and Expliseat has devel­oped recy­cled com­pos­ite process­es to pro­duce seat parts with­out using any vir­gin mate­r­i­al, while guar­an­tee­ing high­er robust­ness com­pared to con­ven­tion­al plas­tic ones.

Lil­i­um pro­cure­ment senior vice pres­i­dent Mar­tin Schuebel said: “The Lil­i­um Jet uses cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy, so we have the best part­ners to chal­lenge the way things are done. 

“Expliseat’s exper­tise with light­weight and durable mate­ri­als will help us reach weight and dis­tance tar­gets for com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion, while ensur­ing a pre­mi­um pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence.”

Expliseat CEO Amau­ry Bar­berot added: “Expliseat leads the fore­front for sus­tain­able seat­ing solu­tions, and Lilium’s selec­tion of Expliseat is a tes­ti­mo­ny to our tech­no­log­i­cal advances and to the effi­cient bal­ance offered between weight sav­ing and extra com­fort. 

“We are proud to devel­op one of the first seri­al­ly pro­duced eVTOL seats in his­to­ry, com­pli­ant with the spe­cif­ic safe­ty stan­dards applic­a­ble to the indus­try, and to con­tribute to Lilium’s pio­neer­ing devel­op­ment.” 

Ear­li­er this month, Lil­i­um named for­mer Air­bus exec­u­tive Klaus Roewe as its new CEO to replace com­pa­ny co-founder and cur­rent CEO Daniel Wie­gand, who will take up his new role on August 1st, while Wie­gand will still be part of the com­pa­ny as Lilium’s Chief Engi­neer for Inno­va­tion and Future Pro­grams and Board Direc­tor. 

Two days pre­vi­ous­ly, Lil­i­um announced that its Phoenix 2 tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor is the first ever full-size elec­tric jet air­craft to tran­si­tion from hov­er to wing-borne flight, which means that the air­flow going over the flaps attach­es and becomes smooth, allow­ing the lift to be gen­er­at­ed by the wing as in con­ven­tion­al fixed wing air­craft, rather than by the engines, which is the case dur­ing the hov­er­ing phase.