Germany Successfully Tested An Electric VTOL Flying Car, First Flight Test Went Perfectly

It seems after autonomous vehicles, the next trend involves cars is the flying variety. Although a lot of people have expressed their doubt that it would ever come about, there are actually some examples of vehicles that can be used on roads and the skies now. One of them is even available for pre-order. However, a German cell recently made history by creating a VTOL unit that is powered entirely by electricity.

An all-electric flying car is impressive enough, but to make it a VTOL is even more noteworthy. This is exactly what a company in Germany called Lilium Aviation did, Futurism reports. As of right now, the vehicle is only a two-seater model that can take off and land vertically. In a rather rare occasion, the vehicle worked perfectly during its first flight test, which was done via remote control.

The unit is equipped with 36 engines, which are then mounted on 12 flaps. The vehicle also comes with a wingspan of over 10 meters long. In terms of performance, the craft can reach maximum cruising speeds of 183mph and has a range of over 183 miles. In essence, this means that the vehicle can only be flown for one hour when pushed to its speed limit.

In a press release, the company’s CEO Daniel Wiegand expressed his enthusiasm and excitement over the vehicle’s successful flight test. He also shared that this success will allow the company’s team of engineers to design a bigger version that can seat five people, instead of two.

“Seeing the Lilium Jet take to the sky and performing sophisticated maneuvers with apparent ease is testament to the skill and perseverance of our amazing team,” Wiegand said. “We have solved some of the toughest engineering challenges in aviation to get to this point.

“The successful test flight programme shows that our ground-breaking technical design works exactly as we envisioned. We can now turn our focus to designing the five seater production aircraft.”