Brazil's largest airline buys hundreds of electric aircraft for air taxi

In early August 2021, the German company Lilium, which creates electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically, announced the sale of 220 of its cars for up to $1 billion to Azul, the largest Brazilian airline.

The partners announced the creation of a network of air taxi eVTOL - electric aircraft with vertical take-off and landing uses electricity for vertical hanging, take-off and landing throughout Brazil. It is planned to fully implement the project until 2025.

The plane we plan to launch will reach a speed of 282 km per hour. The flight range will be 250 km, - Lilium chief strategist Alex Assailey.

Brazil's largest airline Azul buys hundreds of electric aircraft for air taxi

The aviation industry is under increasing pressure to look for new ways to power its carriers, as policymakers publicly recognize the need to move to a low-carbon society.

The last Lilium plane, this is a five-seater model, but the one that will go into mass production and be sold to Azul will be seven-seater, Assailey said, adding that the production line is 50% complete.

Electric power plants open the space for designing VTOL aircraft using concepts such as distributed electric power plant (DEP), as well as promoting new approaches to VTOL with a wing.

Each Lilium aircraft will cost Azul about $4.5 million. Azul is the largest domestic airline in Brazil in terms of the number of cities served and daily departures.

Investors supported Lilium, which competes with companies such as Airbus and BlackFly, having so far allocated $300 million.

However, the company plans to raise another $830 million, which will allow it to estimate the cost after receiving money at about $3.3 billion. The money is raised through SPAC with QellSPAC, which will be chaired by former Airbus CEO Thomas Enders.^[1]

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