Through its co-founder and CEO Patrick Nathen, Lilium announced the sale of its activities and the dismissal of 1,000 employees, after ten years of activity and more than a billion dollars injected into the startup, which sought to develop an electric plane. “After 10 years and 10 months, it is a sad realization that Lilium has ceased its activities. The company that Daniel, Sebastian, Matthias and I founded can no longer pursue our shared belief in more environmentally friendly aviation. It's heartbreaking and the timing seems painfully ironic.”wrote Patrick Nathen, in a post on LinkedIn.
Lilium's German electric plane was, like other brands which also foundered, an eVTOL. Understand by this, an electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle. It wanted to reach the maximum speed of 100 km/h in the areas, but its speed has quickly dropped in recent months while the startup has experienced great difficulties. However, its future seemed guaranteed, notably with an order for 100 copies of the aircraft on behalf of Saudi Arabia. In 2021, Lilium even managed to go public, with a Nasdaq listing, to give itself a name and obtain more funds.
The years before its electric plane arrived on the market were surely too many and Lilium therefore had to stop dreaming of aiming for the sky, and announced, as early as October, that it was going bankrupt. One of its last attempts at relief was with the German government, which was unable to respond to the appeal of these former doctoral students from the University of Munich, who had chosen, in 2019, to favor London and the Kingdom -United to establish their development base for the software and engineering of their concept. Among the investors who had given their confidence in Lilium, we noted Tencent in 2020, Atomico, but also the Brazilian airline Azul which had signed a letter of intent to buy 220 copies of the future aircraft.
Lilium's troubles began, for their part, in 2020, when the specialized magazine Aerocourier announced that Lilium was certainly not going to succeed in keeping its schedule, and achieving the performances announced for its electric plane. A year later, former employees of the startup declared to Forbes that recent test flights had presented great difficulties in the development of the aircraft. What some will remember about the device concerns its design, while in 2024, Lilium won the design team of the year award, by the Global Advanced Air Mobility Awards.
In the United States, eVTOLs arrive in 2025
In the meantime, in the United States, regulations for eVTOLs are evolving and the market is preparing. Last October, the American air police (the FAA) opened the way for these aircraft with final regulations on them. In this, as “air transport of the future”, eVTOLs became a new category of aircraft, the first since the arrival of helicopters in the 1940s. With this new framework, the regulations thus obtained clear texts regarding the training of pilots, the minimum values to be respected, particularly in terms of visibility, and the altitudes taken.
In a statement, the FAA said: “The FAA will continue to prioritize the safety of our system as we work to seamlessly integrate innovative technologies and operations. This final rule provides the necessary framework to allow powered-lift aircraft to operate safely in our airspace.” The door opened to startups like Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation, the two main ones in the United States, which have managed to survive in the face of difficulties in development and access to funds. Both companies are targeting commercial operation for next year, in 2025.
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