Lilium

We believe exceptional entrepreneurs, empowered by technology, are best-placed to solve some of humanity’s most entrenched and seemingly intractable problems.

Lilium addresses several of them: gridlocked cities with public transportation systems groaning under demand they cannot expand quickly enough to serve; pollution choking town and city centres; lengthy, mind-numbingly slow daily commutes reducing our downtime and family time; parts of the world with poor quality road and transport infrastructure; even the lack of affordable housing — after all, low-cost, easy-to-use and highly efficient ‘air taxis’ travelling at 5x the speed of the average car, and with a range of up to 300km, will bring swathes of underdeveloped land to within commuting distance of major cities, thereby increasing supply. These are some of the issues Atomico was set up to help tackle.

This is why we are so excited about Lilium Aviation. Their technology has the potential to transform our ability to tackle both congestion and pollution, making life easier for us as we move between cities and cutting radically emissions from transport. We believe it’s actually our best chance of tackling both problems at the same time.

Lilium has created an electrically powered commuter plane, capable of taking-off and landing vertically on a patch of land no wider than its own modest wingspan. Most importantly, the Lilium Jet emits exactly same amount of CO2 whether it travels five miles or two hundred — precisely none.

Lilium is a great example of how transformative technology is now being developed in Europe. The team is based just outside Munich and since it was founded in 2015 the firm has brought together over 30 leading experts in the fields of avionics, composite materials and autonomous vehicles.