Lilium to build airframe of its Lilium Jet eVTOL with Aciturri as part of new long-term partnership

Lil­i­um has cho­sen Aci­tur­ri, a glob­al man­u­fac­tur­er of aerostruc­tures and aero engine com­po­nents, to han­dle pro­duc­tion of its Lil­i­um Jet’s pri­ma­ry com­pos­ite struc­tures. The long-term part­ner­ship also marks a sig­nif­i­cant step towards pro­to­typ­ing the eVTOL air­craft for ser­i­al pro­duc­tion.

It fol­lows a com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment process and marks a new growth seg­ment for Aci­tur­ri, which has two lines of busi­ness; design, man­u­fac­ture and assem­bly of aerostruc­tures, and the man­u­fac­ture of engine com­po­nents: pri­ma­ry struc­tures, cas­ings, rings and high pre­ci­sion machin­ing.

It has expe­ri­ence in the design and man­u­fac­tur­ing of major air­frame com­po­nents for Air­bus, Boe­ing, and Embraer, and will use mate­ri­als sup­plied by Toray Indus­tries to work on the Lil­i­um Jet.

Yves Yem­si, Chief Pro­gram Offi­cer at Lil­i­um, said: “Dur­ing my 16 years at Air­bus, I became well acquaint­ed with Aciturri’s capa­bil­i­ties in pro­duc­ing com­plex com­pos­ite struc­tures for com­mer­cial air­craft, to exact­ing qual­i­ty stan­dards. Few com­pa­nies in the world have mas­tered design­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing aero­space com­pos­ite struc­tures like Aci­tur­ri.

“It is for this rea­son that the com­pa­ny is an ide­al part­ner for Lil­i­um, as we con­tin­ue our strat­e­gy of work­ing with the best tier one aero­space sup­pli­ers. This is imper­a­tive as we man­age de-risk­ing high vol­ume pro­duc­tion of our air­craft. We are excit­ed to have Aci­tur­ri ful­ly on board as we pre­pare for pro­to­typ­ing and ser­i­al man­u­fac­ture ahead of our com­mer­cial launch.”

Lil­i­um’s engi­neers will now work togeth­er with Aci­tur­ri on a bespoke design, account­ing for the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, the design of the com­plex fuse­lage struc­ture, as well as the high­ly inte­grat­ed canards and wing struc­tures which sup­port the air­craft propul­sion sys­tems.

Com­ment­ing fur­ther on the part­ner­ship, Alvaro Fer­nan­dez Bara­gaño, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Aci­tur­ri, added: “We have long sought inno­va­tion in all that we do, and Lil­i­um is no excep­tion. We look for­ward to build­ing this spe­cial rela­tion­ship to sup­port Lil­i­um in achiev­ing their vision of bring­ing this unique air­craft to life.

“This long-term part­ner­ship allows us to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with Lil­i­um through its ear­ly oper­a­tional years, and beyond, through­out which we will con­tin­ue to explore new meth­ods and advanced tech­nolo­gies which our advanced tech­niques are capa­ble of achiev­ing, to ensure pro­duc­tion of the high­est qual­i­ty and at grow­ing scale.”

Lil­i­um’s announce­ment with Aci­tur­ri adds to sev­er­al oth­er impor­tant devel­op­ments from the Ger­man start­up, as it con­tin­ues on its path to launch com­mer­cial ser­vices in cities from 2025.

The com­pa­ny is work­ing with Fer­rovial to devel­op a net­work of ver­ti­ports link­ing cities in Flori­da, USA, and in Europe, has signed part­ner­ships with both Dus­sel­dorf Air­port and Cologne/Bonn Air­port as it looks to devel­op region­al air mobil­i­ty net­works in North Rhine-West­phalia, Ger­many’s most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed state.