World's First Pure Electric VTOL Aircraft Takes Flight - Video

Lilium Jet has successfully completed the maiden flight of its all-electric VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) Eagle aircraft.

The two seat Eagle is just a test prototype at this point, but the company has already begun work on a production-intent 5-seat model that would be targeted for on-demand air taxi and ride-sharing services.

Range of these production aircraft is said to be 300 km (186 miles), as well as having a 300 km/h (186 mph) top speed.

The VTOL capability was achieved through an array of electric motors that rotate by 90 degrees.

Lilium celebrates successful flight tests and introduces 5-seater VTOL jet

We have incredibly exciting news to share. The Lilium Jet successfully completed its maiden test flight series in the skies above Bavaria. The 2-seater Eagle prototype executed a range of complex maneuvers, including its signature mid-air transition from hover mode to wing-borne forward flight.

Seeing the Lilium Jet take to the sky and performing sophisticated maneuvers with apparent ease is testament to the skill and perseverance of our amazing team. We have solved some of the toughest engineering challenges in aviation to get to this point. The successful test flight programme shows that our ground-breaking technical design works exactly as we envisioned. We can now turn our focus to designing a 5-seater production aircraft.

We are now developing a larger, 5-seater version of our Lilium Jet, designed for on-demand air taxi and ridesharing services. A typical journey with the Lilium Jet will be at least 5x faster than by car, with even greater efficiencies in busy cities. So a flight from Manhattan to New York’s JFK Airport will take around 5 minutes, compared to the 55 minutes it would take you by car.

---

---

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Insideevs.com?

Take our 3 minute survey.

- The InsideEVs team