SKF and Lilium strengthen growing partnership with agreement to produce electric motor bearings

SKF has signed a sup­pli­er agree­ment to pro­duce the elec­tric motor bear­ings for Lil­i­um’s type-con­form­ing eVTOL air­craft.

This lat­est announce­ment rein­forces the strong work­ing rela­tion­ship between both com­pa­nies, after SKF sup­port­ed Lil­i­um on the design of elec­tric motor bear­ings for the Lil­i­um Jet’s elec­tric engine.

After almost two years of col­lab­o­ra­tive work and a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of iter­a­tions, the SKF bear­ings are now under­go­ing final cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and qual­i­fi­ca­tion tests. With a ded­i­cat­ed elec­tric avi­a­tion team and strong tech­ni­cal sup­port, SKF has been able to help Lil­i­um reduce sys­tem weight, ful­fil aero­space cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments and meet low-cost and short lead time tar­gets.

Greg Zim­mer­man, Direc­tor Aero­space Busi­ness Unit at SKF, said: “With elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, the aero­space indus­try will expe­ri­ence a trans­for­ma­tion in the com­ing years. We are pleased to be a part of this devel­op­ment by being the pre­ferred bear­ing sup­pli­er on the elec­tric motor bear­ings of the Lil­i­um Jet.

“It sup­ports our strate­gic focus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and our com­mit­ment towards the achieve­ment of the goals set out in the Paris Cli­mate agree­ment. We are the first bear­ing sup­pli­er to have a ded­i­cat­ed prod­uct port­fo­lio, team and part­ner­ship expe­ri­ence in this excit­ing elec­tric avi­a­tion seg­ment.”

SKF has also been able to offer sup­port to the Lil­i­um’s impact and endurance test cam­paign at its Valence Aero­space Test Cen­tre in France, as well as run risk mit­i­gat­ing spe­cif­ic tests on the elec­tric motor bear­ings.

Mar­tin Schuebel, SVP Pro­cure­ment Oper­a­tions at Lil­i­um, added: “We’ve been impressed with the devel­op­ment progress made in coop­er­a­tion with SKF on this impor­tant com­po­nent of our rev­o­lu­tion­ary elec­tric jet engine. We chose SKF based on their abil­i­ty to pro­vide qual­i­ty and safe com­po­nents.

“The agree­ment is ful­ly aligned with our sup­ply chain strat­e­gy, which is found­ed on strong part­ner­ships with estab­lished Tier 1 aero­space com­pa­nies.”