Toray Industries to supply carbon fibre composite for Lilium Jet production

Lil­i­um has signed an agree­ment with Toray Indus­tries to sup­ply high­er per­for­mance car­bon fibre com­pos­ite, which will be used to build the Lil­i­um Jet’s pri­ma­ry struc­tures — such as its flaps, fuse­lage and wings.

In the first instance, the mate­r­i­al will be sup­plied direct­ly to Lil­i­um for use in the pro­duc­tion of fur­ther tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tors, before being deliv­ered direct­ly to sup­pli­ers who will man­u­fac­ture parts for pro­to­types and ser­i­al pro­duc­tion.

The agree­ment also paves the way for fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion between the two com­pa­nies, both in the pro­vi­sion of oth­er high-per­for­mance mate­ri­als and the estab­lish­ment of research and devel­op­ment part­ner­ships.

Yves Yem­si, Chief Pro­gram Offi­cer at Lil­i­um, said: “Toray’s wealth of expe­ri­ence in the world of high-per­for­mance car­bon fibres and com­pos­ite mate­ri­als speaks for itself and we’re proud to be count­ed amongst the aero­space com­pa­nies they sup­ply.

“We look for­ward to devel­op­ing a close col­lab­o­ra­tion with Toray in the years ahead and to build­ing a resilient and agile sup­ply chain for the Lil­i­um Jet, togeth­er with oth­er well-estab­lished and reli­able aero­space sup­pli­ers across dif­fer­ent fields of tech­nol­o­gy.”

Toray Indus­tries is recog­nised as a glob­al leader in aero­space mate­ri­als and their car­bon fibre prod­ucts played a crit­i­cal role in the suc­cess of the Boe­ing 787 Dream­lin­er.

Dis­cussing the part­ner­ship, Minoru Yoshi­na­ga, Toray Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Toray­ca and Com­pos­ites Divi­sion, said: “We are pleased to be select­ed as a part­ner by Lil­i­um, one of the most promis­ing com­pa­nies in this emerg­ing mar­ket sec­tor.

“We look for­ward to work­ing with Lil­i­um to solve the envi­ron­men­tal issues in urban areas, con­tribut­ing by the pow­er of mate­ri­als.”

News of the part­ner­ship comes just weeks after Lil­i­um con­firmed it had wel­comed Bail­lie Gif­ford, Tesla’s largest share­hold­er, as a new investor, bring­ing total funds raised to date to over $375m.

The fresh fund­ing will sup­port the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Lil­i­um Jet as well as under­pin­ning prepa­ra­tions for ser­i­al pro­duc­tion in Lilium’s new­ly com­plet­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties. It places Lil­i­um amongst the top 20 most valu­able star­tups in Ger­many.

The Lil­i­um Jet is a five-seater, emis­sions-free air­craft that can take off and land ver­ti­cal­ly and is designed to pro­vide high-speed region­al con­nec­tions of up to 300km in under an hour.

Lilium’s vision of air mobil­i­ty encom­pass­es a net­work of ver­ti­ports spread across an entire region, pro­vid­ing high-speed, point-to-point routes. Each addi­tion­al ver­ti­port added to the net­work would con­nect direct­ly with all oth­ers with­in a 300km radius, lead­ing to a fast scal­ing net­work that can pro­vide region­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty at a frac­tion of the cost of tra­di­tion­al infra­struc­ture such as high-speed trains. Lil­i­um expects com­mer­cial oper­a­tions to com­mence in 2025.

Daniel Wie­gand, Co-Founder and CEO at Lil­i­um, added: “Secur­ing this sup­ply agree­ment marks an impor­tant step in the matu­ri­ty of our sup­ply chain and in our prepa­ra­tions for ser­i­al pro­duc­tion.”

A Decem­ber 2018 study from Mor­gan Stan­ley sug­gest­ed that the rapid­ly grow­ing elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) mar­ket could be worth as much as $1.5t by 2040, with $851b of that com­ing from the pas­sen­ger mar­ket which Lil­i­um tar­gets.