Florida is renowned for its strange news stories. In recent weeks alone, one resident reported an alligator in her garage that
turned out to be a pool floatie
; another discovered a python in her washing machine
; and a horse needed to be pulled out of a septic tank
by firefighters.
Still, don’t dismiss Orlando residents who report seeing flying taxis overhead because they may just be coming.
Lilium Aviation
, a five-year-old, Munich, Germany-based startup that designs and makes electric vertical take-off and landing jets, is reportedly
seeking tax incentives from the city to build a 56,000-square-foot transportation hub with the promise that it will create 100 high-wage jobs in return.
According to the Orlando Business Sentinel, the proposed facility — a takeoff and landing area that would be part of Lilium’s first transportation network in the U.S. — would represent a $25 million investment and, according to the city’s own estimates, generate $1.7 million in economic impact in a 10-year period. (Lilium
in September
began separately exploring with Germany’s Düsseldorf Airport and Cologne Bonn Airport how to turn the two airports into regional air mobility hubs.)
It’s probably a smart time for Lillium — whose planes aren’t expected to be up and running until 2025 — to be talking with cities about additional airport revenue. Passenger traffic has fallen through the floor, owing to the pandemic, and cargo traffic has
not been immune
, either. In the meantime, 95% of revenue from airports comes aeronautical and non-aeronautical services.
Meanwhile, Lilium has a little more spending money, after raising $35 million in fresh funding in June led by
Baillie Gifford,
the largest investor in Tesla, a round that brought the company’s total funding to date to $375 million.
Earlier investors in the company include
Atomico,
Tencent Holdings and Freigeist.
We sat down with Atomico founder Niklas Zennström in
late 2016
when the firm had just led a €10 million
Series A in Lilium, a bet that seemed early at the time despite rivals like Terrafugia
and AeroMobile
, but that may be a reality fairly soon. Indeed, there are now at least 15
flying ‘cars’ and ‘taxis” in development.