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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

The elephant in the room is the weight of the batteries (a few 100 Kg at least) and the range / max flight duration given those specific batteries. That's a dealbreaker with a design like this if it doesn't work out.

Wonder how heavy the demo was and what part of the weight was batteries. Everything else is just along for the ride. Short wings -> needs lots of speed to get any advantage from the wings.

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It's the first point they mention on the landing page:

- 300 km range - Travel from London to Paris in one hour.

Yes, the could have written anything there. What matters is what the weight of the combination is to achieve that range (even in theory). It takes a lot of energy to fly a plane with aerodynamics such as this one, far more than your typical glider and batteries are very very heavy. Also there wasn't anybody on board.

If this whole contraption weighed more than 100 KG for the demo I'd already be very impressed, even more so if 80% of that wasn't battery weight and if it could stay aloft for more than the one minute demo.

This is not so simple.

That's what they claim they will do, not what they've demonstrated. This seems to be a modernized version of Moller International's "just around the corner" hype of the last, what, 30 or so years, only Lilium's hype seems more oriented toward potential investors/acquirers rather than selling pre-orders to aspiring individual owners of flying cars that'll never be commercially viable.

Aka investor bait. It's been awfully quiet around Moller since 2010 or so, maybe that's why this company is able to do what it does. Normally you'd be sent home to do your homework if you came up with a battery powered VTOL with short stubby wings.

The first and only interesting problem these guys should solve is how they are going to power it. Everything else can wait until then.

Well, there's an interesting, tangentially related bit in their March 2017 newsletter [0]

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Moller International has received a number of emails from newsletter subscribers who have expressed concern that MI’s lead in VTOL capable flying cars is being upstaged by companies like Airbus, Ehang, Embraer, Google, and Joby. Nothing that is presently contemplated as a battery powered flying car is a threat to the technology that has been developed by MI.

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Incidentally, it it wrong that a kind of want a Moller v. Lilium PR battle to be a thing?

[0] http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=84c20a8ab4539585a29aaaa5...

That will only happen if they see each other as going for the same sources of funds. The one is in .de the other in the United States to I doubt that that would happen.

Even so, it would be hilarious. Maybe we can set them up? Mail them both saying you're ready to pre-order but are also looking at the other?

Incredible that Moller is still going at it and that he still manages to get more money. Elizabeth Holmes could learn a thing or two from Moller.

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