The chief commercial officer of German electric aircraft developer Lilium is urging investor patience as the company seeks additional financing after recently losing a German loan guarantee.
Sebastien Borel insists Lilium is closing in on achieving certification for its electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft Lilium Jet, having already completed much of the programme’s difficult work.
“My message to investors is, we’re really close and we need everyone to jump with us, to make it happen,” Borel said on 22 October at NBAA BACE in Las Vegas. “The executive team is working hard right now to… get more funding and to find solutions.”
It comes after news broke that the German government denied Lilium a €50 million ($54 million) loan guarantee, casting doubt about the financial solvency of a company that has already raised $1.5 billion in financing.
“We’re going to need to raise more, and we’re working on that solution right now,” says Borel. “Having a German government [guarantee] would have been [a]… great signal to investors, but we’re working on different avenues right now to fix it.”
Borel says Lilium has made enormous progress in developing its 4-6-passenger Lilium Jet, an aircraft the company insists can transform regional air travel.
It is now manufacturing three aircraft it plans to use for flight testing, which it hopes to start early next year. The manufacturer aims to have the Lilium Jet certificated in 2026 and to produce the type in Germany and a yet-to-be-decided US site.
Borel says “most” of the work preceding certification has already been completed and that the company has settled on Lilium Jet’s means of complying with European regulations. Also, the Federal Aviation Administration today finalised its electric air taxi operating and pilot-training rules, meaning Lilium and competing electric aircraft developers can now work toward US compliance.
“The industry believes in Lilium, believes in our products. We have detailed unit economics of the aircraft. We have demonstrated what it can do in performance,” Borel says. “We are very close to… first flight and then to enter into service.”
