Most people do not have the years to devote to becoming a good pilot, much less get a new category cert, so I find that these sorts of prototypes have a very limited audience.
"Or maybe you want to escape to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend? That would be less than an hour on a Lilium Jet"
... ah, mountain flying with batteries, what could possibly go wrong.
Also, I find the lack of a vertical stabilizer this plane to be an odd choice. It seems like they have a ballistic chute for backup when the power fails, but it might be hard to deploy that when you cannot do any spin recovery.
Yeah, I worry that a lot of the use cases are in the most complicated and dangerous flight environments (mountains, big cities), even before you consider things like weather, airspace management, power margin at altitude...
>Also, I find the lack of a vertical stabilizer this plane to be an odd choice.
Not to mention any form of traditional aerodynamic control surface: "With 36 single-stage electric motors providing near-instantaneous thrust in almost any direction, control surfaces, such as rudders, ailerons or a tail, aren't required."
They've really doubled down on their VTOL shindig. Seems like a pretty big gamble making an aircraft that's entirely dependent on its propulsion system for basic aerodynamic stability and control (I'm also curious if the wings would make noticeably less lift in a glide). "Intrinsically simple design," huh?
Given enough redundancy in the powertrain and power, I think it's probably going to be more reliable mechanically than the average piston-engined light aircraft.
Where I would really worry, of course, is the software driving all of that. It's very likely it will need some sophisticated control systems and may not even be inherently stable aerodynamically.
And a ballistic parachute is not super safe in mountainous areas where the ground is not flat. With the typical ballistic parachute there is zero control on where you land. And even in the best circumstances the landing is pretty rough, it's more like a last resort.
However engine failure can also occur on fuel-powered aircraft. And at least this thing has a whole lot of engines so it could afford the failure of a few. The batteries could be subdivided in sections.
Ignoring hard failures (like a battery case overheat+rupture)...
Running out of fuel is, unfortunately, not as uncommon as it should be. Most aircraft glide quite well (10:1 glide ratio). I really cannot tell with this plane, but the lack of control surfaces make it a meteor.
"Or maybe you want to escape to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend? That would be less than an hour on a Lilium Jet" ... ah, mountain flying with batteries, what could possibly go wrong.
Also, I find the lack of a vertical stabilizer this plane to be an odd choice. It seems like they have a ballistic chute for backup when the power fails, but it might be hard to deploy that when you cannot do any spin recovery.