Lilium GmbH was founded in 2015 by four engineers and PhD students at the Technical University of Munich, Daniel Wiegand, Sebastian Born, Matthias Meiner and Patrick Nathen. They are supported by the Business Incubation Center Bavaria, the European Space Agency, Chinese Internet companyTencent, Atomico, Obvious, LGT and Frank Thelen's investment company Freigeist Capital. The Lilium Eagle, an unmanned two-seat proof of concept model, performed its maiden flight at the airfield Mindelheim-Mattsies near Munich in Germany on 20 April 2017. The Lilium Jet five-seater prototype first flew in May 2019. The prototype was powered by 36 electrically-powered jacketed-propellers mounted in movable flaps that can point down for vertical takeoff and gradually moved to a horizontal position to provide forward thrust. The five-seat Lilium Jet is capable of achieving a top speed of 300km/h and targets a range of 300 km. In 2017, Lilium announced plans to launch a 5-seat Lilium Jet by 2025, aimed for the air taxi service market. In October 2019, Lilium released footage showing the Jet in full flight, taking off vertically and transitioning to horizontal flight. Lilium also announced the completion of its first manufacturig facility in October 2019. , the registered office of Lilium GmbH was in Weßling near Gilching in Bavaria, Germany. Lilium raised a new finance round of $90 Million in September 2017. In May 2018, the car designerFrank Stephenson became chief designer for Lilium. He previously worked for BMW and designed various sports car brands. Also in 2018, Arnd Mueller, previously Chief Brand Marketing Officer & GM Esprit Image GmbH-Member of the ExecutiveManagement Team, became VP Marketing of Lilium. He is to build the air taxi development company and its product into an international brand. In September 2018, Yann de Vries, formerly partner at Atomico, became the new VP of corporate development Lilium. In December 2018, Oliver Walker-Jones became Head of Communications. He previously worked in the same position in aviation at Rolls-Royce. At the beginning of 2019, Lilium held discussions with the Switzerland's national rail company SBB on the use of the air taxi as a means of transport between the station and at home and a letter of intent was signed. In July 2019, Lilium announced London, UK as its base to develop its software engineering team. The engineering team is led by Carlos Morgado, former chief technology officer of Just Eat. Luca Benassi, a former Airbus executive with experience at Boeing and NASA, has been named Lilium’s chief development engineer. Yves Yemsi who worked as head of program quality for Airbus A350 aircraft has been hired as chief program officer. Dirk Gebser has joined as vice president of production.
Awards and recognition
In 2018, Lilium was named as the management team of the year - industrial goods as the silver Stevie winner of the Stevie Awards. In July 2019, the Lilium five-seater Jet received a Red Dot Award: Design Concept for "Best of the Best".
