In a live video shared via its official YouTube page, the German aerospace developer, Lilium, demonstrated its first electric jet, achieving the world’s first main wing transition for Electric Aircraft.
The company’s Phoenix 2 is the 5th generation all-electric technology demonstrator plane, achieving a main wing transition for the first time through a full-size electric jet aircraft that has ever made the transition from hover to wing-borne flight.
Indeed, this was a landmark moment for the electric aviation firm. Although it is only one small step for Lilium towards achieving its mission to transform regional air mobility. The firm plans to continue the flight test campaign and expand the flight envelope further, including the transition of the forward canards and high-speed flights.
A transition like this has never been achieved in flight before on a full-size demonstrator aircraft. It’s also one of the most significant roadblocks in eVTOL operations. From an aerodynamic standpoint, completing the transition implies the aircraft may convert from generating lift only from the engines to generating lift from the wind above and below the wing.
The Phoenix 2 did so throughout the whole main wing while remaining stable and performing as Lilium’s patented Flight Dynamics Model predicted.
The primary wing transition according to Matthias Meiner, Phoenix Chief Engineer and Lilium Co-Founder, the primary wing transition is a big step forward and verifies the flight dynamics model. He gave full credit to the great Lilium team, who worked tirelessly to get us here and are now laser-focused on the remainder of the Flight Test Campaign.
Hundreds of firms are competing in the eVTOL aircraft sector. They’re all aiming for the same thing: to develop zero-emission passenger-carrying air vehicles for short-haul urban or regional flights while also increasing customer accessibility. The Phoenix 2 uses a series of thirty fans in the wings driven by batteries, unlike many of Lilium’s competitors’ models.
