VTOL electric aircraft

Last year, we reported on Lilium Aviation when they secured a €10 million investment from Atomico, an important global venture capital firm based in London. The Germany-based startup founded in 2015 by four aerospace engineers and product designers is developing the Lilium Jet, an electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft.

Today, Lilium announced that their full-scale prototype had its maiden flight and they released some impressive footage of the achievement.
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A startup operating mostly in stealth mode for the past 6 years has been developing a very interesting battery-powered vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft, which could potentially be described as a “flying car”.

Just over two years ago, some early prototypes were spotted at the company’s facility near Google’s X lab, now called the Moonshot factory, which sparked speculation that Google was financing the project. Not much was known about the company then, but we did some research after finding out that it went on a recent hiring spree and we are now bringing you the most up-to-date report on this promising project.

Zee Aero was founded by Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford and former NASA Researcher at Ames Ilan Kroo. He recruited a surprising number of students and colleagues from both organisations to launch his startup, which looks more ready than ever to debut its aircraft.

We’ve heard about flying cars supposedly coming to market for years now. It appears to be one of those “always in the lab” technology and although the term “flying car” could potentially apply to what Zee is working on considering the vehicle is shown in patent applications literally parked in an average looking parking space, simply looking at it as an aircraft is more useful here. Especially considering its differentiating features are almost as impressive on an aircraft as it would be on a car, namely its vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capacity and more importantly, the fact that it’s powered by a battery pack.
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