Lilium achieves first main wing transition for all-electric aircraft [video]
I&#x27;m skeptical.<p>They&#x27;re claiming they&#x27;ll be able to store 300kWh of energy on board. That&#x27;s the equivalent of about 4 Tesla Model Y cars. Even if they could pack this much energy on board, flying that much weight 200km is almost certainly going to take more than 300kWh, especially with 7 passengers.<p>Lilium is very proud of their ducted fan designs and their power usage profiles -- and they should be! -- but they&#x27;re counting on advancements in battery tech that are unlikely to happen in the timeframe they need. It&#x27;s much more likely they will be limited to 100km range or 30-minute flights at a maximum when reserves are factored in.<p>This says nothing about how fast they can recharge those massive batteries. If they have the equivalent of four Tesla superchargers available they can probably recharge completely in 40 minutes or so, which is probably good enough. But that charging infrastructure needs to be in place at virtually every pad where the plane lands, so the &quot;ordinary helipads&quot; they brag about using are not going to work without roughly a $million of power infrastructure upgrades at each. If they try to go cheap on this, they will have to live with multi-hour recharge times.