Posted on 10/25/2024 7:03:20 AM PDT by Red Badger
Lilium was slated to deliver its first two Jets to customers in 2026. Was.Lilium View 1 Images
Seven years after its first test flight, German electric air taxi manufacturer Lilium has run out of funding and filed for insolvency for its two primary subsidiaries.
That's from a regulatory filing with the US SEC, in which Lilium stated it had failed to raise an injection of US$54 million (€50 million) from the German government to continue its operations. The company had raised over $1 billion from numerous investors over the years.
That's not just bad news for the eVTOL company, but also awful timing. It comes on the heels of the US FAA issuing new regulations governing "power-lift" (aka VTOL) aircraft earlier this week. Those rules pave the way for aviation firms like Lilium to clear regulatory hurdles and bring their machines to market.
And just a couple of days ago, Lilium had announced its partnership with GE Aerospace to "build scalable flight data management solutions that inform the right safety standards and guidelines for eVTOL operators."
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
“Apparently they couldn’t find a way to recharge them in the air.”
It’s not whether the idea was viable, or whether the government should have dumped MILLIONS into the concept, it is the MESSAGE that they sent, which was that there was an alternative to DESTROYING the planet.
If you have any vision at all, a battery operated air taxi makes about as much sense as an EV school bus.
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