Why is it of interest to AWE? Because it’s mostly autonomous (does not require a pilot) and has a lot more redundancy compared to for instance a helicopter. This makes it (presumably) easier to achieve sufficient mean-time-between-failure for mass civilian adoption.
I believe these are some qualities that AWE, in particular the rigid wing variants, also need to be looking for.
If the Lilium succeeds, it would set a precedence that these things are possible, thus indirectly advancing rigid wing AWE to a great extent.
Based on historic timelines for aerospace revolutions to unfold, do not be surprised when it takes several decades for Lilium’s business model to succeed, by more solid players with better technology.
There is a rush of competitors in the autonomous personal e-VTOL aviation sector. Three with strong AWE affiliations are Joeben Bevirt (Joby Aviation), Damon Vanderlind (Makani), and Dr. Mark Moore (Uber flight research). Bivert naively started taking preorders a few years ago, Damon walked away from a sinking Makani, while NASA veteran Moore warns the “flying taxi” going will be slow.
Given urban safety and noise problems, plus luxury-market costs, a reverse talent migration from vanity aviation to AWE R&D seems likely.
lilium (Lilly dear) (ilium and the odyssey?) appears to be one more overly-optimistic vaporware rendering to me.
If this is not apparent to you, maybe you need to live another 25 years or so. It will last as long as the attention-span of the promoters, in my opinion. Or as long as whatever money they can raise from renderings will last. Wouldn’t place too much faith in this concept. For me anyway, this one doesn’t pass (sniff sniff) “the smell test”.
3 points if you can place the Lilly Dear reference…
Remember about 5 years ago Moller’s “flying car” made a press-release vaporware comeback - once again it was “about a year away”. It was like when you forget your phone: you feel like you’re back in the 1970’s! I love it when I forget my phone. A feeling of freedom. Which I guess means it will soon be illegal…
By the way, “talk to your doctor, to see if Lilium might be right for you.”
