Tencent backs German startup behind flying jet taxi

PARIS: With a promise to haul passengers from downtown Manhattan to JFK Airport in just five minutes, flying jet taxi designer Lilium GmbH raised US$90mil from investors including Tencent Holdings Ltd.

The Munich-based startup wants to use the money to build a prototype that can seat five people and fly as fast as 300km per hour, after its existing two-seater test model had a successful first flight in April, Chief Commercial Officer Remo Gerber said in an interview.

Other backers include Luxembourg private bank LGT Group, Twitter Inc co-founder Ev Williams’s Obvious Ventures, and UK investor Atomico, bringing the company’s total capital raised to more than US$100mil.

“We think our technology could be rapidly adopted in urban areas or between cities – all you need is a landing pad,” Gerber said. “We’re looking for partners who can operate it, at a cost similar to train transport or taxi for passengers.”

While it’s still early days for flying taxis – Gerber estimates it will be several years until Lilium’s jet is ready for mass production – this mode of transportation has attracted investments from Daimler AG in German startup Volocopter GmbH, as well as Airbus SE, which is backing an automated-flight project called Vahana.

Still at prototype phase, these technologies will need some regulatory clearance before commercial deployment happens.

More broadly Lilium – which also has back- ing from the European Space Agency – joins companies such as Seabubbles SAS, a French startup that’s designed a flying water taxi, which are exploring solutions to unclog city traffic and make it easier for people to commute.

Founded in 2015 by a quartet of academics from the Technical University of Munich, Lilium has since hired senior staff from Gett Taxis, Airbus and Tesla Inc. The April test flight program included a mid-air transition from hover mode to wing-borne forward flight.

“What you’re going to see at this point is a lot of concepts based on different technologies – drones, planes, others,” Gerber said. —