These are som pretty impressive goals. If they can truly achieve a hover state as quiet as 60db, and get the efficiency they've outlined, these could truly change the way we look at short-haul travel.
The idea of a 2 hour drive from a small town to the big city being reduced to a 1hr flight (with no airport - yay helipads) is already a market where helicopters are making money. Doing that in even less time, in more comfort (ugh - choppers are loud), and at lower cost per hour/mile will change things dramatically.
Experts always have questions about disruptive technology.
They are often not right, since disruptions are not incremental change, but tons of nuanced ones that lead to a significantly better overall system.
Edit: "Often" does not mean always, or the majority of the time. Lilium is clearly not a scam, and seems to be making steady progress towards their goals.
I think this is such an important point to differentiate. Yes, incumbent experts can be caught flat-footed when a new technology comes along that is essentially just much better at what they do. Best example in my mind is the iPhone, where essentially the big old-school cell phone execs totally poo-poo'ed Apple's ability to create a compelling cell phone in 2008: "A computer company doesn't know what they're doing."
But that is fundamentally different than pointing out real physical limitations of an idea, and the danger is you get exactly the OP response, "The old guard always dismisses you until you change the world!" yada yada. This is basically exactly what happened with Theranos - anyone in the actual field of microfluidics knew it was all bullshit.
Of course, but it seems like the gap between what is physically possible and what has been demonstrated is pretty large when it comes to aircraft. Has anyone made a specific argument that Lilium violates the laws of physics?
Air taxis are unlikely to become as common as the industry hopes.
But helicopters are already viable. Increase reliability, drop upfront/operating costs an order of magnitude, and make it autonomous to remove cost of a pilot; then you have a lot more cases where it would be a viable option.
That whole article looks and reads like an automatic translation. I’m guessing the original says “Ist der Lilium Jet eine Luftnummer?” Or perhaps “Luftpumpe”. A “Luftnummer”, an “air number”, is “hot air”. A “Luftpumpe” is an air pump but can also mean someone is a BS artist.
There’s also a bit of a bad pun hiding in there if it was “Luftnummer”, because “eine Nummer schieben” means to have sex, colloquially. If you really wanted to preserve that … you’d reach for the “blow job”.
They should be compared to vehicles that occur in the space that these "air taxis" are meant to take off and land in. If they're relegated to airports, fine, compare to helicopters. If they're meant to take off and land in my neighborhood, compare them to cars.
A bullet train is better if there's one that already happens to go from your location to your destination. If they manage to make these VTOL planes safe and cheap enough, they'll be far easier to deploy than any train system. Also while there's overlap between short haul aviation and train markets, the infrastructures don't have to be mutually exclusive.
You are thinking the classic hub and spokes transport network where you have to travel to a major city with an actual bullet train station travel to another big city at high speed and then do an uber/taxi/whatever to get to and from the station on both sides. In the extreme case, this would be more of a point to point kind of thing. Walk to the nearest flat surface where one of these things can land and wait a few minutes to be picked up. Your local super market's parking lot would be big enough. On the other side, you land at a similar venue and then walk to your destination in a few minutes.
Most cities could end up with hundreds or thousands of suitable locations for these things to take off and land long term. So, about similar to the density of subway stations or better. But a lot cheaper to build.
I would say, at least in the near/medium future, the fact you'll never hit a traffic jam for a 1 hour commute is a big plus.
But then again, weather probably will ground it more often.
The ultra rich in London, NYC, and LA: you can live 2 hours as the crow flies by car (which would be 3-6 hours depending on traffic) and cut it to an hour or less.
Or you can plop your floating megamansion offshore and commute to the city from there.
Bullet trains are point to point, and you have transit to station overhead. This is more direct above and beyond an absolute speed advantage.
My take was actually the opposite. I can't see this changing anything.
Since this thing won't be able to take off from my driveway or land at my destination, I figure it will still take 2 hours to go door to door. Once you arrive, you'll still need your own transportation too.
Unless this is somehow cheaper and more comfortable than driving, I can't imagine ever using something like this.
The idea of a 2 hour drive from a small town to the big city being reduced to a 1hr flight (with no airport - yay helipads) is already a market where helicopters are making money. Doing that in even less time, in more comfort (ugh - choppers are loud), and at lower cost per hour/mile will change things dramatically.