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Lilium – Electric vertical take-off and landing jet
- ohazi 9y agoGiven that this is an electric aircraft, their range estimate is delusional.
- JoeMattie 9y agoCouldn't this be solved with a small diesel generator mounted in the back?
- Luc 9y agoGoogle 'battery energy density trend'...
- david-given 9y agoI dunno. Remember it's got wings, which means once it shifts into forward flight mode, the engines are used solely for propulsion and not for lift, which is vastly more efficient. Playing with the numbers here: http://web.mit.edu/lochie/www/erange/main.html http://web.mit.edu/lochie/www/erange/main.html ...shows it can be made to work, provided the thing has very low drag (I was using a battery specific energy of 200 for a LiPoly cell). Given it's a streamlined blob with stubby wings, that seems vaguely plausible. Anyone with a better grasp of the principles want to comment? Update: I found their tech page (see link upthread). They use lithium ion. They have about the same specific energy as lithium polymer.
- pdelbarba 9y agoLook at the power requirements for similar aircraft to get an idea of range. An SR-20 (similar size, speed and composite) needs 180hp and probably 140 for the roughly 300kmph cruise. That's 104 kW for an hour plus the FAA 30min minimum remaining at maybe 80 kW (higher for commercial ops) that's 720kg of batteries or roughly the the empty weight of a cessna 172 edit: this is also very generous because it assumes you don't need to takeoff and climb. Max cruise on the SR-20 is 155kn so the power requirement is as much as 20% greater
- vvanders 9y agoI wonder how head-wind factors into that as well, I know on our EV I can easily see 10-15% consumption difference if I run into a strong one at freeway speeds.
- pdelbarba 9y agoWind will always affect flight speeds regardless of configuration. To use physics terminology, the air around you becomes your frame of reference. 10kt tail wind and 100kt True Air Speed = 110kt ground speed
- Symmetry 9y agoA SR-20 has a single engine at the front of the plane rather than 36 scattered over the wings. They claim, at least, that that makes a big difference in aerodynamic efficiency.
- pdelbarba 9y agoIt does in some cases (see NASA X-57 where the fan is used to accelerate air over the wing, leading to a smaller wing with lower drag overall) but I'm not convinced in this case. Having a system that is efficient at high airspeed and high thrust generally requires a variable geometry propeller (constant speed prop in GA terms) because a 'lift fan' at high relative airspeed, would have to spin much faster than a 'cruise fan' like you would see on a regular aircraft meaning airflow over the blades is higher leading to higher drag on the blade than necessary.
- neuronexmachina 9y agoI don't see how something like this is workable unless practical lithium-air or zinc-air batteries are developed. Looking at their founding team, I don't see any who come from a battery/electrical background, they mostly seem to be aerospace/mechanical folks.
- alex_hirner 9y agoRest assured they work with a company that is really good at packaging [1]. However true, chemistry innovations will need to come from the lower end of the R&D pipeline. [1] wrote my thesis with them, http://openbatt.org http://openbatt.org
- tehsauce 9y agoDon't get me wrong, this is super cool technology. But imagine putting a 1500kg Tesla 100kWh battery into a much more efficient Cessna type design that is lighter and has larger wings. It would need to dish up about 80kw to maintain cruising speed, which is only about 180km/h. Factoring in the tiny wings and incredible weight, this thing would be hard pressed to stay airborne for a hour at 100km/h. I just hope is capable of gliding to a landing if the Battery dies or fails. Then it could be safer than a helicopter.
- jacquesm 9y agoA whole Cessna weighs maximum 1100 Kg or so on take-off. With the batteries unshielded and a bare minimum for motors, structure, avionics and parachute there wouldn't be any margin for a passenger.
- MagnumOpus 9y ago> imagine putting a 1500kg Tesla 100kWh battery into a much more efficient Cessna type design Can't put 1,500kg into a Cessna - but if you are happy with 130kg of batteries for 50-60 minutes of max flight time, you can buy the Pipistrel Alpha Electro today.
- Theodores 9y ago...well, by 2025 it will all work because batteries will be 10x more powerful. What would be interesting would be a very long power cable - a mains lead - that took the thing to some useful altitude before detaching. I can't see myself having a reel of copper, 1km long in the back garden any time soon though.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoSo, everyone can "drive" it, it would fly above and land into cities… Regulating this is going to be fun.
- marcosdumay 9y agoProbably as much as for helicopters. That said, what's the differential why one would want this instead of an helicopter? It it cheaper? Faster? The site is certainly not telling this.
- p1esk 9y agoProbably smaller, faster, and safer.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoThis thing cannot autorotate. Sure, it could withstand the loss of a few motors, but it can't survive power loss. A chopper can.
- p1esk 9y agoYes, but some of the helicopter accidents happen because rotor blades hit something. Those would be avoided here.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoSorry, I didn't mean those cannot be made safer. I do sense a tradeof however: chopper blades can hit things, and this aircraft cannot handle power loss. Which is safer? I have no idea.
- runako 9y ago>what's the differential why one would want this instead of an helicopter From the homepage: "Access inner cities with less noise than a motorbike" That's a huge difference.
- sidcool 9y agoQuite amazing if the claims are true. They are too good to be true.
- monkmartinez 9y agoThis is cool... and let me say I am no aerospace engineer. I am a flight enthusiast... mostly R/C quadcopter and plane as real planes are $$$. It looks like an extremely large ducted fan R/C plane with VTOL. Calling it a "jet" in the parlance of today seems like a stretch. Are ducted fans "jets"? I guess the argument could be made. I would think the people buying these would very well think of a jet as propulsion from combustion. Also, the FAA and turbine (jet) rating... I could go on... The VTOL is awesome, and something I think we'll see more of as quadcopter technology scales to more robust .gov missions. The applications for this tech are limitless...
- ajross 9y agoIt's a "jet" in the sense that it doesn't have a visible propeller, which is really the only meaning that word has any more. Virtually all the thrust produced by aircraft that people call "jets" comes from shrouded fans of some sort.
- strgrd 9y ago> It's a "jet" in the sense that it doesn't have a visible propeller, which is really the only meaning that word has any more. Did I wake up in some alternate reality where people are incapable of Googling well-defined words they don't understand? This is patently untrue, and I would be curious to find a single example of any aircraft being described as a "jet" because "it doesn't have a visible propeller."
- lvh 9y ago"Jets" are called "jets" because they produce a jet of matter (water or air) behind them, causing motion via Newton's third law. If the illustrations on the technology page are accurate, this fits the bill fine. What useful definition of jet am I missing (beyond the trivial "can't be electric") where this can't usefully be called a jet?
- monkmartinez 9y agoWell, the only definition that matters would be the regulating body with jurisdiction. In the case of the US, that would be the FAA. It is squarely an experimental plane.
- dfar1 9y agoWhat are the fail safeties? Parachute? Alternate motor? It would suck to have one of these things fall on my head.
- glitcher 9y agoFound the following at the bottom of https://lilium.com/news/ https://lilium.com/news/ What makes it so safe? Safety has been the top priority from day one of Lilium’s development. We’ve incorporated the concept of what we call ‘ultra redundancy’. The aircraft is designed such that it does not have a single point of failure, which means any component can fail in any flight condition and the aircraft will always be able to do an ordinary vertical landing automatically. The objective behind this concept is to make flying a Lilium Jet as simple as driving an electric car. At the same time, we provide an unprecedented level of safety both through a failure-tolerant aircraft and through avoiding pilot errors in stressful situations. For the duration of the flight, the software’s Flight Envelope Protection system rejects unsafe pilot commands. No matter what you do as a pilot, the system will always maintain safe flight conditions. Additionally, the Jet is equipped with a whole-aircraft parachute.
- drspacemonkey 9y agoI'm sure it would be none-too-pleasant for the person flying inside it, either.
- dfar1 9y agoBut that's their choice, not mine ;)
- rosser 9y agoBesides the obvious things like seat belts, airbags, &c, I'd hope these have those whole-vehicle parachute systems you see on some small private planes.
- dmh2000 9y agoHelicopters can autorotate, planes can glide. like the Moeller contraption, this type of thing falls. I would insist on a ballistic parachute.
- BuffaloBagel 9y agoEnergy Density: Jet fuel - 46 MJ/kg Lithium-ion battery - less than 1 MJ/kg
- 0x6c6f6c 9y agoThis is an electric VTOL craft which runs off an energy source that is renewable, unlike jet fuel. If it can be done that is what should be important here.
- Element_ 9y agoEnergy density is "good enough". Cities like New York banned helipads on the top of high-rises after the Panam crash in the 70's because of the risk of jet fuel flowing down a high-rise and igniting. Electric powered vehicles like this would solve that issue and allow quick travel around high density cities, they could land on top of buildings to pick up passengers. Current battery technology should be enough to support these short range trips around a city. A good example would be a corporate executive traveling from their NYC headquarters to the local airport to board their business jet. It's not a long distance trip but helicopters are not suitable.
- InsideJob 9y agoBut jet fuel can't melt steel beams!
- BuffaloBagel 9y agoBy what metric is it "good enough"? Appears to me to be not good enough by a long shot. VTOL is especially energy intensive.
- brink 9y agoFrom the bottom of their mission page.. First full scale prototype has already been flown. First manned flight planned for 2019. On demand air transport planned for 2025. https://lilium.com/mission/ https://lilium.com/mission/
- clueless123 9y agoWas the flight test done at full weight capacity ? (Passengers and/or cargo)
- jacquesm 9y agoThe elephant in the room is the weight of the batteries (a few 100 Kg at least) and the range / max flight duration given those specific batteries. That's a dealbreaker with a design like this if it doesn't work out. Wonder how heavy the demo was and what part of the weight was batteries. Everything else is just along for the ride. Short wings -> needs lots of speed to get any advantage from the wings.
- popey456963 9y agoIt's the first point they mention on the landing page: - 300 km range - Travel from London to Paris in one hour.
- jacquesm 9y agoYes, the could have written anything there. What matters is what the weight of the combination is to achieve that range (even in theory). It takes a lot of energy to fly a plane with aerodynamics such as this one, far more than your typical glider and batteries are very very heavy. Also there wasn't anybody on board. If this whole contraption weighed more than 100 KG for the demo I'd already be very impressed, even more so if 80% of that wasn't battery weight and if it could stay aloft for more than the one minute demo. This is not so simple.
- dragonwriter 9y agoThat's what they claim they will do, not what they've demonstrated. This seems to be a modernized version of Moller International's "just around the corner" hype of the last, what, 30 or so years, only Lilium's hype seems more oriented toward potential investors/acquirers rather than selling pre-orders to aspiring individual owners of flying cars that'll never be commercially viable.
- jacquesm 9y agoAka investor bait. It's been awfully quiet around Moller since 2010 or so, maybe that's why this company is able to do what it does. Normally you'd be sent home to do your homework if you came up with a battery powered VTOL with short stubby wings. The first and only interesting problem these guys should solve is how they are going to power it. Everything else can wait until then.
- alistproducer2 9y agoI have to say I'm impressed. This is a game changer for several reasons. The first is that full autonomy is much easier in aviation than with ground transport. Second is successful implementation of flying cars would change things (for the middle class and rich) in a major way: potentially for everyone if the economics of sharing these works out where regular folks could afford to hail these and the system could scale. Something like this that connects the exurbs to the city would be a game changer. I would imagine inner city luxury housing would take a big hit. Anyways, super cool to see that thing take off.
- monkmartinez 9y agoI am squarely middle class... how in the hell would I be able to afford this, pilot training, maintenance and more if I can't afford to buy a 1960's Cessna 172? Nevermind the maintenance, training and more? Flying cars for the masses are a delusional pipe dream.
- fredley 9y agoIf it's fully autonomous, which as has been noted is easier for aviation, you don't buy it, you rent it for a few minutes.
- timothycrosley 9y agoImagine ordering a Lyft and this show up. This is amazing.
- jl6 9y agoI laughed at the thought that you might one day use a ride sharing app and forget to specify that you wanted a car.
- drspacemonkey 9y agoThey're aiming to make it a taxi service. You wouldn't have to own one or deal with maintenance, you'd just pay the $X for your trip. And if it's fully autonomous (which it appears to be), then you -- as a passenger -- wouldn't have to be licensed any more than if you were flying commercial. I have no idea what sort of regulatory hurdles would exist or how easily they'd be overcome. But the fact that they've already built the plane would indicate that they've already taken that into consideration.
- red023 9y agoThe future is here - but for rich people only.
- Banthum 9y agoThe future is here; it's just not evenly distributed yet. That's been true for a long, long time, though, and rich people always take the role of vanguarding expensive new technologies. Later it'll get developed into more efficient forms and commoditized.
- Symmetry 9y agoTo the extent that Uber is only for rich people, maybe. At least given the prices they say they're targeting.
- mschuster91 9y agoBiggest problem, given they're German: these things won't fly in Germany outside of airports. In Germany, it's not even allowed to do agricultural aircraft flying based on anything but a licensed airstrip - the only kind of aircraft permitted to start and land anywhere are SAR and military aircraft, and gliders can only land anywhere (simple physics) but have to be started from a licensed airstrip. Helicopters (SAR/military excepted) also may start and land only on licensed helipads, which won't be licensed in cities. And to those imagining a future of living in rural countryside and flying to work... no way cities are going to permit random people flying over it, not after 9/11.
- huula 9y agoThere's no people sitting in the vehicle in all these videos. Is 300km with or without load?
- jmcphers 9y agoThey've never done a manned flight[0]. Presumably they expect 300km with typical load, but they haven't actually demonstrated it yet. [0] https://lilium.com/mission/ https://lilium.com/mission/
- amerine 9y agoIt's been a while since my jaw dropped when I saw a video. Even if this goes nowhere I'm impressed with what they've done so far. Best of luck Lilium!
- joshaidan 9y agoWhen I read the part about "Order your air taxi to the nearby landing pad," I immediately thought of the old Commodore 64 game SpaceTaxi. `Pad 1 please` :)
- gooseus 9y agoVery skeptical of any claims until I hear some hands-on opinions by individuals far smarter than I am. They didn't show anything about the inside of the aircraft or the controls. However, to speculate for a moment. If it is possible to create a vehicle such as this, then this is what I would love to see as the real direction of all those self-driving car companies (Google,Lyft,Apple,Uber,etc). I trust humans in land-craft far more than I trust humans in aircraft, and I might even consider the problems to solve by AI in shuttling humans from point A to point B through the air might actually easier than those you have to solve navigating the roads and ground-based hazards... way less human-driven vehicles and dumb animals (including humans) up in the air and a lot more ways to maneuver and avoid them. I think a much better future is the one where our tech companies use their AI to control these air taxis and have them pickup and dropoff between tons of mini-airstrips (including the tops of apt buildings?) and we get a new ubiquitous form of fast public transportation which takes the load off of the rest of the transportation infrastructure without creating a weird human/AI dynamic on the roads. But, as has been said... probably too good to be true for right now.
- TylerE 9y agoTheir useful range is almost nil. 300km cruise speed with 300km range = 1 hour endurance. General flight planning guidelines call for at least 45 minutes of reserve fuel in case of things like weather or landing holds. So really the useful range is more like 50km.
- jacquesm 9y ago50 km fully loaded in that thing would be amazing with present day technology. I don't think it can be done.
- corey_moncure 9y agoGeneral flight planning guidelines do not take into account VTOL capability!
- vkou 9y ago
- red023 9y agoThis looks like cars all over again. Massive energy waste for transporting single persons. Looking at this reminds me of people driving alone on heavy massive gas consuming 4 seat vehicles to drive the same way everybody else is driving. Except that now its in the air and for rich people only. I don't see flying cars happening, well at least not like this. There probably will be flying shuttles that take people to different places like buses or metros that would make way more sense then this.
- iamatworknow 9y ago>There probably will be flying shuttles that take people to different places like buses or metros that would make way more sense then this. Airplanes exist. The future is now!
- red023 9y agoNo I mean small shuttles like buses that start vertically and transport people short distances across a city for example.
- aphextron 9y agoAs a pilot I would never step foot in this thing. The thought of being in an aircraft with zero aerodynamic control, or ability to glide in a dead stick situation is a complete nightmare. It doesn't matter how redundant your systems are if you have a fundamentally unstable airframe with no yaw control. In a total power loss situation, you must have some type of glide profile. All other forms of aircraft have this. Such a design would be fine for drones, but this will never carry humans.
- dm_i386 9y agoHow is the glide profile any worse than a helicopter's?
- dingaling 9y agoHelicopters glide or 'autorotate' tolerably well after engine or driveshaft failure, at least enough to land controllably. In the R22 two-seater the best glide ratio is about 4:1 ( 4ft horizontal for 1ft drop ) and those at my local airfield practice autorotation to landing all day long. Apparently the worst helicopters for autorotation are those with Kamov's superimposed coaxial rotor system, which struggle to reach 2:1 for some aerodynamic reason I don't know.
- TylerE 9y agoIn a helo you can attempt auto-rotation, which while tricky at least gives you a fighting chance.
- aphextron 9y ago>How is the glide profile any worse than a helicopter's? This is a common misconception. Helicopters can glide to a landing just like airplanes.
- ominous_prime 9y agoHelicopters glide quite nicely. Learning to autorotate is something you learn early on when getting your license.
- 9y ago
- poultron 9y agoMany people are failing to appreciate the "tesla for the skies" model that is coming. Uber is actively pursuing the acquisition of companies like Lilium. Long term, roads aren't a great solution to increasing populations. The Ubers of the sky which land in your front yard or the top of your building and whisk you anywhere within 200-300 miles is coming... fast. And by making the eletric VTOL aircraft autonomous with waypoints, no one has to be a pilot. You simply hail a plane with your app, hop in, fly to your destination and depart. Many companies are testing full-size models like Lilium... for example, http://www.jobyaviation.com/ http://www.jobyaviation.com/. No one has carried a human passenger yet, and none with autonomous waypoint flying. But soon... within a year.
- FabHK 9y ago> No one has carried a human passenger yet Volocopter, first manned flight, April 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs
- Animats 9y agoThat's a nice achievement. The question is battery life. They've built a big drone. The cockpit is empty except for a GoPro.[1] How far can they go with a payload? The video looks like a Kickstarter promotion. Too many neckbeards, not enough video of product working. A few minutes of uninterrupted flight video would be more impressive. They don't show the transition from vertical to horizontal flight, either. There have been several battery-powered human carrying aircraft. Most are scaled-up quadcopters.[2] Here are five of them.[3] All have flown and none are shipping. [1] https://youtu.be/ohig71bwRUE?t=65 https://youtu.be/ohig71bwRUE?t=65 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrZwt9KIvWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrZwt9KIvWs [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYsDcoS5Gt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYsDcoS5Gt8
- zokier 9y ago> There have been several battery-powered human carrying aircraft. Most are scaled-up quadcopters Umm.. wat? Afaik most serious attempts for electric (battery-powered) aircraft have been fairly conventional fixed-wing designs. As you seem to like youtube videos, here are couple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uoy3Efsxp3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uoy3Efsxp3o from Airbus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiu8TFnXYFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiu8TFnXYFY Siemens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiADDbeFanU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiADDbeFanU Pipistrel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1g1JrRRkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1g1JrRRkY Electroflight I think the Pipistrel one is actually already shipping today.
- Animats 9y agoI was just looking at the VTOL aircraft, since the parent article was about a VTOL.
- FabHK 9y ago[1] is the Lilium Jet that the article is about. [2] is the Volocopter (18 rotor drone), but some weird video (titled "The Amazing Biggest Drone in the World"). This video is published by Volocopter, and more comprehensive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs [3] covers the eHang 184 (4 twin rotors), the Quadro UAS (20 rotors), the Aero-X ("flying bike" with 2 ducted fans), the Flike (3 twin rotors, coming to market in 2016 (?)), and the Volocopter (18 rotors).
- rosalinekarr 9y agoThis seems way too good to be true. Seeing as the timeline on their mission page puts the first manned flight at some time in 2019 and their technology page states that the vehicle is built primarily with aluminum and carbon fiber, I'm guessing that this thing is incredibly light, maybe even under 500kg. The video seems to back this up with how easily the craft drifts side-to-side in the air with cross-breezes. That low weight is an impressive feat of engineering, but it's also a big disadvantage for any real world applications because passenger and cargo weight is going to be a huge problem. You can't build passengers out of aluminum and carbon fiber. Even combustion-powered, light aircraft have serious problems with weight, and their pilots frequently have to work passenger weight into their fuel calculations. My guess is that this technology will do wonders for aerial photography, scientific research and maybe even military reconnaissance, but transportation and any kind of serious shipping are still a very long way off.
- rosalinekarr 9y agoThis seems way too good to be true. Seeing as the timeline on their mission page puts the first manned flight at some time in 2019 and their technology page states that the vehicle is built primarily with aluminum and carbon fiber, I'm guessing that this thing is incredibly light, maybe even under 500kg. The video seems to back this up with how easily the craft drifts side-to-side in the air with cross-breezes. That low weight is an impressive feat of engineering, but it's also a big disadvantage for any real world applications because passenger and cargo weight is going to be a huge problem. You can't build passengers out of aluminum and carbon fiber. Even combustion-powered, light aircraft have serious problems with weight, and their pilots frequently have to work passenger weight into their fuel calculations. My guess is that this technology will do wonders for aerial photography, scientific research and maybe even military reconnaissance, but transportation and any kind of serious shipping are still a very long way off.
- aviationthrway 9y agoHi Hacker News, Several people in this thread have pointed out the major reason that this airplane design is not viable, which is the weight of the batteries. I have developed an alternative that I would like to patent. I asked for an introduction here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/65cazg/i_need_an_introduction_to_an_engineer_who_has/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/65cazg/i_need... But I did not receive responses. Subsequent to this, I reached out directly to patent attorneys I thought would be qualified. Here I ran into a big problem. I will quote my reply email: >"After speaking with the partner who handles our firm’s major aviation client, we have determined that taking you on as a client would likely result in a conflict of interest. This is more than just a matter of potentially overlapping subject matter. The fact that you wish to license your IP to other aviation companies would actually mean we couldn’t represent both you and our other client in those negotiations. In effect, we’d be on both sides of the discussion, which is by definition a conflict of interest." This is actually an issue with any qualified patent attorney who might take on this case. I would therefore like to work with an aviation engineer. I believe we could draft the patent language ourselves. I don't want to include a terrible amount of information here, but I want to list one benefit of the invention: - Solves the distance issue. jacquesm's analysis in this thread is absolutely correct. This is what motivated me to ask if there were any aviation engineers in this thread. The cost to entering the aviation market is extremely high and the only viable means of doing so is via the patent approach, so I would like to work with someone who has had patents in their own name. Please let me know if you would be someone who might be able to collaborate with me on this project, and I will get in touch with you. Thank you!
- idreyn 9y agoDo you have a working prototype?
- aviationthrway 9y agoHi. Thank you for your reply. I am never going to build any airplane (well never say never - I should say, it's completely orthogonal to any of my plans). I have a mathematical (-type, obviously it's physics and aerodynamics) proof that it should be possible, so that the person reviewing it would be quite easily assured that what I propose is theoretically possible - but then so is a space elevator. I do not have the level of qualifications necessary to show that it is actually easily possible at airplane scales and with present materials. If I built a prototype (doing so is not in my plans) then it would be at a very small scale and I personally don't know how to do the calculations to see how it applies to larger scales. In other words, if I had the prototype flying around me right now it wouldn't help convince me that it's possible and plausible. Further calculations are necessary and only an aviation company (or an aviation engineer) is able to perform those. Are you an aviation engineer? Do you know someone who could spend a few minutes on this case? I will need a small NDA but I am not very concerned of IP theft, just the formalities; the assurance can be verbal via email. Unfortunately the medium would have to be via email as public disclosure prevents patenting and I don't know at what point (if ever) I would get to that stage. Let me know if you or someone you can put me in touch with could look at this briefly. Your profile here does not list an email. Thank you for your assistance.
- pvelagal 9y agoThis looks awesome! Hopefully more companies build stuff like this and drive adoption.
- tobyhinloopen 9y agoI have a hard time believing the range. We have a hard time creating 300km range on cars, how would they do it on a freaking plane?
- antisthenes 9y agoIf you put it on a bootstrap template, it must be true!
- Sephr 9y agoHow would this compare with the TriFan 600?
- agumonkey 9y agoFun coincidence I was just reading about SuperCar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercar_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercar_(TV_series)
- Symmetry 9y agoSo, putting huge numbers of small electric motors on your wings has big efficiency advantages. But is there any reason this has to be stricktly battery powered? This seems like a situation very well suited to hybrid electric power with a internal combustion generator providing the power for level flight.
- clueless123 9y agoI could easily imagine it picking me up from the top floor of my apartment building, taking me to the heliport at the top floor of an office building. My current commute is 10 km of horrendous traffic. Driving time on rush hour = 1.5 hours Flying time @ 100kph (average of speed up, slow down and cruise) 6 minutes! Then it would just fly on it's own to pick up the next customer.
- jacquesm 9y agoImagining it is as close as you'll ever come to flying this thing. It just isn't going to happen. See also: Moller Skycar.
- intrasight 9y agoI do expect to live to see the day that such things are ferrying people around. But I also do think that it'll take a major breakthrough in energy storage technology. And if that happens, then all kinds of things become possible.
- Kinnard 9y agoOk, I'm calling it, this is technically a flying car!
- jressey 9y ago> The system can still do a vertical landing with a loss of up multiple engines. I'm more than skeptical about the quality of the safety features if there are glaring mistakes in the language describing it.
- FabHK 9y agoI assume they used to specify the number ("loss of up to 6 engines"), then switched to the vague "multiple", and screwed up the editing.
- _Adam 9y agoThey didn't mention any battery specifications. Chemistry, capacity, weight, nothing. Just a wistful "300km'. That's a bad sign. Battery technology is the gating factor for electric planes and not even calling that out suggests they have not solved it. Great design, great prototype, now give us the power consumption specs. Show me where that 300km is coming from.
- aphextron 9y agoAnyone interested in the actual future of electric powered flight should check out Pipistrel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiADDbeFanU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiADDbeFanU
- jokoon 9y agoWho cares? Once batteries can get as much, or more energy density than fuel, those types of machines will appear naturally. I'm not really impressed by this project to be honest, I'm more interested by cost and energy density of batteries. Can't wait to see how the giga factory impacts the price of batteries.
- notheguyouthink 9y agoDo you know much about the Gigafactory? How do you expect it to affect the price of batteries? Also on that note, are there any limitations on the number of batteries we keep creating? Eg, Lithium supply?
- JBReefer 9y agoI don't think it's fair to assume that rechargeable batteries will ever have a higher usable energy density greater than Jet A.
- notheguyouthink 9y agoI'm curious on how they get "less noise than a motor bike". There are plenty of quad copters that i feel are more loud than most bikes, let alone the weight this thing has to put out some significant thrust requirements...
- Applejinx 9y agoThat thing's empty. It's a giant carbon-fiber drone. Cool and all, but that is not a test flight. Initially I thought it was using those spinning-cylinder wings to produce the VTOL behavior! Decent approach, though. No sound. I'd like to hear how noisy it is: the wind alone will be pretty loud, even if the electric motors are silent. And again, there's nobody in that: with a passenger it's going to work maybe three times as hard, depending on how light and dronelike it is empty. They might have next to no batteries in there, it behaves like it's quite staggeringly light. Clever to use dronelike autostabilization to avoid having much in the way of control surfaces. This vehicle absolutely depends on having those fans working, and probably couldn't glide to a landing of any sort.
- jacquesm 9y agoDucted fans run high RPM and screech like banshees. Just another little detail to work out. I just noticed Zennstrom (of Skype fame) is one of their investors.
- elmar 9y agoon the video the transition from lift to forward movement is absent, because it's normally the hardest thing to get right on a VTOL aircraft and i doubt that is solved.
- Applejinx 9y agoI guess I'll just have to do it myself. Fair warning, the result is liable to be goofy and insufficiently Jetson-like, but all the same it's bound to arrive eventually. I'm sure the autostability stuff will be part of the eventual result, because CPU chips are way lighter than aerodynamic control surfaces. I'm sure the Jetsons-hype guys will continue making the direct play for venture capital money. Let 'em.
- byw 9y agoThey could probably fit a parachute to compensate for the lack of gliding ability for emergency landings.
- tlrobinson 9y ago
- ChuckMcM 9y agoI give them kudos for getting past the Moeller air-car stage and actually having something flying. I think if they had been a bit more plugged into the typical fraud patterns from this sort of pitch they might have shot that video a bit differently. In particular it has exactly zero frames where it is in an environment that can authenticate its scale. Consider that this airbus380 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rt9zX1rZFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rt9zX1rZFU) is a really big model but when it is in the air and there are no scale references you could believe it was full size if you had seen a static mock-up of one on the ground. To avoid this you need the unit to fly by, or operate near items that set its scale accurately. A good one is to have people near it when it takes off or lands. That they flew it without a person is understandable (its a new aircraft after all and who wants to kill a test pilot really?) but the cockpit area was completely empty and that is a problem. Test flight data is really only valid if you're testing actual flight conditions. So they really should have had crash test dummy and enough ballast to at least simulate the mass of a pilot in command. The thing that was even more challenging was that the lift moment of the vertical fans in the rear of the wing are behind the center of mass for the pilot. So all of the pilots mass is going to create a pitch down moment on the much smaller front fans. There are really good engineering reasons that most flying car prototypes put the weight over (or under) the wing. They could of course be counter balancing the weight of the batteries that are all located behind the wing, but that would make carrying the weight in the pilot seat even more important.
- jacquesm 9y agoIt's full size, that I believe without any problem. But it really is just a scaled up model, there is no payload and it probably would not be able to stay aloft much longer than the video. (you can see the interior is totally empty in the overhead shot at the beginning of the video). The wing being behind the pilot was probably done for visibility reasons but it will make it very hard to get those front fans retracted or at least out of the way (because of the extra drag they create). At a guess and judging from the way it takes off the COG is just aft of the leading edge of the wing so adding a pilot would have the effect you describe. Scaling a model is hard enough so they definitely should get some credit for that but the way it is spec'd right now it would very much surprise me if they ever go to any level of airworthiness with passengers. Battery tech would have to go through some kind of revolution (and then you'll immediately have a ton of competitors, quite a few of those are much further along in creating viable aircraft but none based on the VTOL model because of its obvious limitations). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipistrel_Alpha_Trainer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipistrel_Alpha_Trainer Has 126 Kg of batteries, can regenerate when it loses altitude (forget that with ducted fans) and has a pretty good wing surface compared to the Ilium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiADDbeFanU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiADDbeFanU Not being VTOL it manages to get about 1 hours worth of flying time (but you'd need to keep a reserve). So there is no question about whether or not electric aircraft are possible. It's just that I don't see the VTOL/short fixed wing and small ducted fan combination work out, especially not at 300 Km/h where drag forces would be considerable, no matter how nice the body looks. It really is an electric version of the Moller Skycar.
- nkristoffersen 9y agoIt totally looks like a rendering.
- jacquesm 9y agoLooking a bit more at this, here (at the bottom) are two more videos of earlier prototypes. All appear to be extremely light. https://www.youtube.com/c/LiliumAviation https://www.youtube.com/c/LiliumAviation
- desdiv 9y agoHere's Aurora Flight Sciences, contracted by DAPRA, flight testing their similar but smaller prototype a year ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgWSuZbGh0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgWSuZbGh0s This is part of DAPRA's VTOL X-Plane program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTOL_X-Plane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTOL_X-Plane
- philip1209 9y agoThere's no wheels - would a plane be required to taxi to fly at a US airport?
- nradov 9y agoHelicopters aren't required to have wheels. They just land directly on a designated helipad and stay there. Then if the ground crew needs to move it they attach temporary wheels and a tow cart.
- mbfg 9y agoCongratulations. you've made life somewhat easier for the top 1%. I'm glad someone is taking up their cause for a change.
- heisenbit 9y agoWhile there are reasons to be skeptical it is worth noting that this effort is carried out in the south of Germany which is where there is a cluster of high tech resources within driving distance <2h - BMW - Mercedes - Audi - Porsche - Airbus suppliers - Military aerospace companies - Key tech universities (Munich, Stuttgart) including aerospace oriented engineering - World class glider manufacturer Schempp-Hirth
- marvin 9y agoThese folks are doing exactly what I've been saying for ages that someone should do once battery tech gets good enough. With a couple of brilliant additions like making the engine pods part of the lifting body, and using many smaller engines instead of a few larger ones. You can't use powered lift for long-distance travel, it isn't energy efficient enough for batteries to work. But you need to use electric motors because you get away with much lower mechanical complexity. This is a disruptive concept regarding where people will choose to live, assuming that the details can be solved.
- dwarman 9y agoWhy do they cakl it a jet? all I see are bunches of small ducted fans. And it's electric powered.