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German Company Building An Electric 'Air Taxi' Makes Key Hires From Gett, Airbus and Tesla (techcrunch.com)
Lilium, the Germany company known for building an electric "air taxi," is announcing a number of key hires from notable companies in the transportation space. While the company is still in its early days, it is ambitiously striving to make flying cars a reality. Back in April, the company launched its first public (and successful) test flight in Germany. TechCrunch reports: [The key hires] are Dr Remo Gerber, former MD for Western Europe at Gett, who joins Lilium as Chief Commercial Officer; Dirk Gebser, who takes up the position of VP of Production and previously held manufacturing executive roles at Airbus and Rolls Royce; and Meggy Sailer, who joined Lilium as Head of Recruitment in February and was formerly Tesla's Head of Talent EMEA. In a call with Gerber, he told me he was "super happy" to be joining the German startup, noting that there are very few companies in Europe with the same level of ambition. "It is definitely the most fascinating job I could have ever imagined," he says, audibly excited. "I've done quite a few things in my time and I've seen quite a few companies but never anything even remotely like that." To add a little color, Gerber pointed out that his training is in physics ("a long time ago") and that his grandfather was a pilot in World War II, and his uncle also a pilot. This, and the first time he saw the Lilium jet fly, made the opportunity to join a startup building a new kind of air travel "irresistible."
This will never fly. It's not a jet. It has no power-off life savings. It won't work within the national airspace systems.
Lillium calls it a jet. One of the quotes in the original article says it's a jet. It's not. There are four kinds of "jet" motors - turbojet (turbine heats gasses and expels them to provide thrust, like a fighter jet), turbo shaft (turbine heats gasses which drive another turbine that powers a shaft for a helicopter or tank, like an M-1 Abrams or a UH-01 "Huey" helicopter), turboprop (turbine powers propeller, like a regional jet), and turbofan (turbine powers a ducted fan to provide high-bypass - 747 - or low bypass - F14 - ducted fan thrust). Lillium uses no turbine, no jet exhaust, just DJI-like electric fans.
Lillium has no strategy for emergency power-off failure. Fixed-wing planes can glide to landing. Helicopters can autorotate. Autogyros are already in permanent autorotations. There is NO PASSENGER-CARRYING AIRCRAFT certified anywhere in the world that hasn't been proven to survive a power off (lost engines, get to ground safely) landing. Lillium can barely make weight lifting its own shell. Lifting its own shell plus cargo or humans is not yet possible. To add to that the ability to do power-off landings is beyond what is feasible.
The US National Airspace System (NAS) and the equivalent in Europe, Japan, Australia, and other countries do not allow aircraft to function in Visual Flight Rules (VFR) areas without constant verbal communication with Air Traffic Control. That means unlicensed "pilots" wouldn't be able to take off or land anywhere in these countries without lots of training... but more importantly they'd have to be in control of the aircraft, which Lillium says would be an automatic self-flying device.
For these reasons (and more, including that no insurer would ever insure it because you can't hold an autonomous vehicle responsible for anything...) this will never fly.
Ehud Gavron
US FAA commercial helicopter pilot
They already produced a full scale model that actually flies. There are 36 individual fans, I guess powered by separate battery packs for redundancy, so a single fan failure doesn't result a crash of the vehicle. Two separate computers for redundancy also.
Then, there is a parachute that should cover the situations where both computers fail for a reason.
I think the goal is to have an autonomous vehicle, so you don't need all the training. They can integrate the autonomous system with the air traffic control - we are not in the 40's anymore - there is no need to call air traffic while a computer can send your exact position and flight plan. This is something that will have to be solved one day anyways - if we are to have any kind of flying vehicle that doesn't require extensive pilot training.
IFR requires communication with ATC. VFR only requires it in Class B, C, and D airspace (and the very rare class E airport with a control tower). The vast majority of the US's airspace below 18,000 feet is class E, and does not even require the aircraft to have a radio. Class G is uncontrolled airspace, generally under 1,200 feet.
I recently flew from Schaumburg airport, 8 miles from O'Hare airport in Chicago (Class E underneath the Class B) to Bowman Field (Class D) in Louisville, KY, and didn't talk to anyone until I was entering Bowman's airspace for landing. Most of my local flights only involve talking to ATC until I've cleared the class D. There is no requirement to talk to ATC for a VFR flight unless you're near a field with a control tower.
Sources: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/71.71
Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge - Chapter 15 (free download from FAA)
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.205