Lilium Prepares for Production of Jet’s Propulsion Units

Lil­i­um announced this week it is prepar­ing the instal­la­tion of its propul­sion units for its pro­to­type Jet, reports a press release. They will begin com­ing off the assem­bly line in Q2, to be used for test­ing. 

Lil­i­um is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Schnaith­mann Maschi­nen­bau, the Ger­man automa­tion and robot­ics com­pa­ny which is also sup­port­ing the com­pa­ny with work­flow design, jigs and tools for Lilium’s aerostruc­tures for the final assem­bly line. Locat­ed near the auto­mo­tive hub of Stuttgart, Schnaith­mann is a glob­al leader in design­ing and sup­ply­ing auto­mat­ed, scal­able indus­tri­al solu­tions with long-stand­ing part­ner­ships in high-vol­ume indus­tries, espe­cial­ly auto­mo­tive.

This part­ner­ship start­ed sev­er­al years ago. Lilium’s aerostruc­tures assem­bly line is already util­is­ing equip­ment pro­vid­ed by Schnaith­mann for han­dling of the Jet’s wings and canards. The propul­sion assem­bly line is locat­ed in the same build­ing as Lilium’s aerostruc­tures.

Jan Dr Nowac­ki, Lil­i­um Senior VP of Man­u­fac­tur­ing, com­ment­ed, “The elec­tric jet engine is a unique, core tech­nol­o­gy, crit­i­cal for air­craft per­for­mance. With the sup­port of Schnaith­mann, we look for­ward to imple­ment­ing state-of-the-art man­u­fac­tur­ing solu­tions capa­ble of being scaled-up and repli­cat­ed for high-vol­ume pro­duc­tion.”  

Jan Dr. Nowac­ki

Gerd Maier, Schnaith­mann Mem­ber of the Man­age­ment Board, Sales and Mar­ket­ing , added, “With near­ly 40 years of expe­ri­ence in sup­ply­ing automa­tion tech­nol­o­gy to glob­al indus­tries, we are proud to par­tic­i­pate in the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of the Lil­i­um Jet. The eVTOL indus­try has the poten­tial to change avi­a­tion in a pos­i­tive, sus­tain­able way, and we are delight­ed to be able to play a key role in help­ing Lil­i­um scale up towards high-vol­ume pro­duc­tion.”

The release explains, “The elec­tric jet propul­sion unit is a core com­pa­ny tech­nol­o­gy and key to pro­vid­ing the required per­for­mance, unit eco­nom­ics and com­fort for region­al air mobil­i­ty. Con­sist­ing of elec­tric jet engines inte­grat­ed into the propul­sion mount­ing sys­tem that forms the rear part of the wings and front aero­foils, the Lil­i­um Jet’s unique propul­sion sys­tem will pro­vide advan­tages in pay­load, aero­dy­nam­ic effi­cien­cy and a reduced noise pro­file, while also pro­vid­ing thrust vec­tor con­trol to maneu­ver the Lil­i­um Jet through every phase of flight.”

In 2023, fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful test­ing of engine sys­tems, includ­ing the fan, sta­tor and e‑motor, Lil­i­um assem­bled the first com­plete Jet elec­tric engine on a pre-series line. The e‑motor has been designed to deliv­er indus­try-lead­ing pow­er den­si­ty of over 100kW from a sys­tem weigh­ing just over 4kg. Major sub­assem­blies of the propul­sion unit are deliv­ered to Lil­i­um by a team of qual­i­fied sup­pli­ers includ­ing Hon­ey­well in alliance with Den­so (e‑motor), Aeron­am­ic (fan), and SKF (elec­tric motor bear­ings).

Mean­while, Lil­i­um will be releas­ing its Full Year and Fourth Quar­ter 2023 Share­hold­er Let­ter on Tues­day (Feb­ru­ary 27th). The com­pa­ny is host­ing a con­fer­ence call at 8 am EST. To access the web­cast of the call, please vis­it the Lil­i­um investor rela­tions web­site at: Lil­i­um FY 2023 Busi­ness Update | Lil­i­um N.V.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.lilium.com

https://www.schnaithmann.de/

(Top image: Lil­i­um)

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