Lilium's €1.5B VTOL Collapse Explained — Why It Never Flew

Lilium raised €1.5 billion to build an electric jet.
But nearly 10 years later, there's still no aircraft. What went wrong?

In this breakdown, you'll learn:
• What Lilium set out to build and why it never flew
• How flawed physics challenged the design from the start
• Why 30 small ducted fans cannot match the efficiency of large rotors
• The real limitations of battery-powered VTOLs for commercial use
• What Lilium got right and what they should have changed

Then we show how Zuri’s hybrid SAF-powered VTOL addresses these core challenges with large, efficient tiltrotors, usable range, and successful flight demonstrations at multiple scales.

Key lessons
• If your aircraft needs five times more energy to hover, no amount of money will fix it
• Batteries are great for cars but aviation demands more energy
• Better design beats bigger budgets

In This Video
00:00 Intro: Why We're Talking About Lilium
00:10 Lilium Enters German Insolvency (Twice) What Went Wrong
00:21 Lilium’s Vision A €1.5B Ducted Fan Jet That Never Flew
00:49 Hover Milestones and the 7 Seat Pivot
01:09 Why Lilium’s Design Failed Ducted Fans and Battery Limits
01:47 What Lilium Got Right and Missed
02:02 The Fix Tiltrotors and Hybrid SAF Propulsion
02:19 Zuri's Approach Real World Design and No Single Failure Point
02:32 Proven Flight Large Scale Demos on 1 Percent of the Budget
02:44 Key Lessons Physics Beats Money
03:01 Batteries Still Aren’t Ready for Flight
03:16 Wrap Up Zuri’s Approach and Call to Action

📍 Follow Zuri for updates on the future of sustainable regional air mobility
🌐 https://zuri.com

#eVTOL #ElectricAviation #HybridVTOL #SustainableFlight #ZuriVTOL #lilium