If you've never heard of Lilium, their slogan is "The Aircraft for Everyone". What this means is that the company is trying to introduce "the world’s first all-electric vertical take-off and landing jet". While that might sound quite ambitious, the firm believes that they will be able to introduce the vehicle in the form of "air taxis" that will be affordable and available to everyone. Today, the firm debuted a video that shows its prototype making its first successful test flight.
As you can see in the video below, although the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) jet looks similar to current airplanes, as the name implies, it does not require a runway and can ascend into the air vertically with the help of its three electric engines. Once the aircraft has reached the proper height, it slowly tilts its flaps to a horizontal position, at which point the craft can move forward.
This was only a test flight and Lilium still has much work to do before it can offer this as a service. It plans to run its first manned vehicle test sometime in 2019, and if all goes well, will make these available as a standard mode of transportation by 2025.
Source: Lilium via TechCrunch
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