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Lilium electric VTOL jet

That’s a hilarious article

Rarely does someone dismantle corporate BS as effectively.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Does this make sense as an alternative power source? The drone use instead of lab bench puzzles me.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50841104

Last Edited by Maoraigh at 21 Jan 10:25
Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/08/lilium-adds-35m-from-baillie-gifford-at-a-1b-valuation-for-its-electric-aircraft-taxi-service/

Baillie Gifford are not stupid and must have read that Aerokurier article of 5 months ago, so I’m puzzled. Hey, maybe I’m completely short-sighted and there is some really incredible new battery technology somewhere in the shadow that will make the concept viable. Well, technically viable that is. Some regulatory hurdles too..

Well, I guess there is simply too much money around and so high risk ventures like these can still get funded.

As long as it’s not my money, or pension funds being ripped off I guess it’s ok.

Private field, Mallorca, Spain

None of the current investors ever aimed at making money by actually sending planes into the sky. They make money by selling their shares to someone else. It’s a big Ponzi-Scheme…

Germany

For now, the company is emitting shares, so all money stays in the company. The time of selling shares has not come yet. And if that time ever comes it must be pretty clear to any buyer that this is a viable company or not. A Ponzi-scheme seems different in that those are pretty opaque, no?

Private field, Mallorca, Spain

aart wrote:

Baillie Gifford are not stupid and must have read that Aerokurier article of 5 months ago, so I’m puzzled. Hey, maybe I’m completely short-sighted and there is some really incredible new battery technology somewhere in the shadow that will make the concept viable. Well, technically viable that is. Some regulatory hurdles too..

Well, I guess there is simply too much money around and so high risk ventures like these can still get funded.

As long as it’s not my money, or pension funds being ripped off I guess it’s ok.

Venture capitalists fully expect most of their investments to fail (I’ve heard the figure 90%), so even a small chance of success is good enough.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

aart wrote:

A Ponzi-scheme seems different in that those are pretty opaque, no?

Not to those who start it ….

Germany

Just for those who haven’t seen it: The Ponzi scheme continues!

If you do not get your 5-seater off the ground, just promise a 7 seater for later and do some financing stunts to “prove” that your fairy tales are worth a fortune. It’s unbelievable how much stupid money is still in the markets…

https://lilium.com/newsroom-detail/Lilium-intends-to-list-on-Nasdaq-through-merger-with-qell-and-reveals-serial-aircraft

Germany

I really like that sentence “CRI-A01 certification basis was received from EASA in 2020” to the investors that sounds like they have it certified but in fact it seems to mean they received a todo list ;-)

Besides all the technical issues I do not understand how this should work out as an operation. Now they want to operate from “vertiports” but if you need a few such facilites why not simply fly fixed wing from airportd? The whole point of VTOL is if you can operate directly from the backyard.

Then they want to “pool” flights. But especially on shot distances the entire time gain is gone if you have to wait for a flight to depart. The whole point of the helicopters for politicians etc. is if you arrive the flight leaves immediately.

Did any of the investors ever do a VFR flight at low level? In Florida during the day? I assume half the passengers will not feel very good after such a flight and never do it again.

Did any of the investors ever hear about VFR/IFR and icing? How should such a design where the 36 engines will ingest any leading edge ice ever work in IMC? Maybe you could deice it electrically but that would require large amounts of power which is not available. And a VFR only plane would be rather useless in many parts of the world. Or you fly very low like did the helicopter from Kobe Bryant.

Still no talk about a parachute? But in such a design if the eletronics fail or go crazy life is over, no autorotation, no gliding, just done. So at least I would want a parachute system as plan B.

www.ing-golze.de
EDAZ

Investing in these sort of projects is a bit like investing in a movie or theatre production.
Firstly there is the fulfillment factor, then you have to work out how much you can lose, taking into account tax and currency advantages etc.
Then you spread your investment between the very risk projects and the less risky investments. As someone wrote earlier 90+% of the very risky projects will fail somewhere along the line, but if even 1 project succeeds the returns can be huge. I met someone who was an original investor in “Jesus Christ Superstar” stage version. He was actually embarrassed by the amount of money he made on that deal.

France
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