How To Choose A Financial Advisor

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Are you seeking assistance with your financial management? If so, you’re not alone. Many Americans could benefit from financial guidance. In fact, according to the National Financial Education Council, the average American incurs a cost of $1,200 per year due to a lack of personal finance knowledge.

Choosing a good financial advisor can help you avoid these costs and focus on your goals. Financial advisors aren’t just for rich people—working with a financial advisor is a great choice for anyone who wants to get their personal finances on track and set long-term objectives. To find the ideal financial advisor for your requirements, consider following our 5 key steps.

Related: Find A Financial Advisor In 3 minutes

Before you speak to a financial advisor, decide which aspects of your financial life you need help with. When you first sit down with an advisor, you’ll want to be ready to explain your particular money management needs.

Keep in mind that financial advisors provide more than just investment advice. The best financial planner is the one who can help you chart a course for all your financial needs. This can cover investment advice for retirement plans, debt repayment, insurance product suggestions to protect yourself and your family and estate planning.

Depending on where you are in life, you may not need comprehensive financial planning. People whose financial lives are relatively straightforward, like young people without families of their own or significant debt, might only need help with retirement planning.

People with complex financial needs, however, may need extra assistance. They could be looking to establish college funds or trusts for their children, navigate aggressive debt payment situations or solve tricky tax problems. Not all types of financial advisors offer the same menu of services, so decide which services you need and let this guide your search.

There’s no federal law that regulates who can call themselves a financial advisor or provide financial advice. While many people call themselves financial advisors, not all have your best interest at heart. That’s why you have to carefully evaluate potential financial advisors and make sure they are good for you and your money.

Part of learning about the different types of advisors is understanding fiduciary duty. Some, but not all, financial advisors are bound by fiduciary duty, meaning that they are legally required to work in your financial best interest. Other people who call themselves advisors are only held to a suitability standard, meaning they only must suggest products that are suitable for you—even if they’re more expensive and earn them a higher commission. (The SEC is trying to regulate this, though, by limiting the use of “advisor” to those who hold themselves to a fiduciary standard.)

Regardless of which kind of advisor you choose, you should make sure you know how they earn money. This helps you determine if their recommendations are actually better for you—or for their wallets.

Here’s how to think about these four types of financial advisors:

Fee-only financial advisors earn money from the fees you pay for their services. These fees may be charged as a percentage of the assets they manage for you, as an hourly rate, or as a flat rate.

Almost all fee-only advisors are fiduciaries. Generally speaking, they have chosen to work under a fee-only model to reduce any potential conflicts of interest. Because their income is from clients, it’s in their best interest to make sure you end up with financial plans and financial products that work best for you.

Some financial advisors make money by earning sales commissions from third parties. Among financial advisors that earn sales commissions, some may advertise themselves as “free” financial advisors that do not charge you fees for advice. Others may charge fees, meaning they derive only part of their income from third-party commissions.

Either way, financial advisors who earn third-party sales commissions derive some or all of their income from selling you certain financial products. If you choose to work with a financial advisor who earns sales commissions, you need to take extra care.

Commission-only advisors are not fiduciaries. They work as salespeople for investment and insurance brokerages and are only held to suitability standards. In contrast, some fee-based financial advisors are fiduciaries, though it’s important to determine if they’re always acting as fiduciaries or if they “pause” fiduciary duty when discussing certain types of products, like insurance.

Related: Find A Financial Advisor In 3 minutes

Keep in mind, commissions aren’t bad in and of themselves. They’re not even necessarily red flags.

Some financial products are predominantly sold under a commission model. Take life insurance: A fee-based planner who receives compensation for helping you purchase a life insurance policy may still have your best interests at heart when advising on other financial products.

“To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with paying the commission for life insurance,” says Karen Van Voorhis, a fee-based certified financial planner (CFP) and Director of Financial Planning at Daniel J. Galli & Associates in Norwell, Mass. “That’s how the structure of that industry works.”

Purchasing financial products via financial advisors that earn commissions may be a matter of convenience, especially if someone will receive a commission regardless of where you buy the product. What’s important is understanding the difference. And if you work with a fee-based financial advisor, understand when they are acting as a fiduciary, especially when they help you purchase financial products.

Get In Touch With A Pre-screened Financial Advisor In 3 Minutes

Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) are companies that provide fiduciary financial advice. RIAs employ Investment Advisor Representatives (IARs), who are bound by fiduciary duty. An RIA may have one or hundreds of IARs working for it.

IARs may call themselves financial advisors and may be fee-only or fee-based. Some may have additional credentials, including the certified financial planner (CFP) designation.

“The certified financial planner designation is really the gold standard in the financial planning industry,” says Van Voorhis. A CFP designation indicates a financial advisor has passed rigorous industry exams covering real estate, investment, and insurance planning as well as has years of experience in their fields.

Because of their wide range of expertise, CFPs are well-suited to help you plan out every aspect of your financial life. They may be particularly helpful for those with complex financial situations, including managing large outstanding debts and will, trust and estate planning.

Robo advisors offer low-cost, automated investment advice. Most specialize in helping people invest for mid- and long-term goals, like retirement, through preconstructed diversified portfolios of exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

“For younger people who are really tech-savvy, a robo advisor just to manage retirement funds could be a perfect solution,” says Brian Behl, a CFP at Behl Wealth Management in Waukesha, Wisc. “I don’t think they’re going to get as in-depth advice on insurance and retirement and taxes.”

People with complex financial needs should probably choose a conventional financial advisor, although many robo advisors provide financial planning services a la carte or for higher net-worth clients.

“While the robo advisors have really disrupted the industry…I do think there’s still a place for human advisors right now,” says Corbin Blackwell, a CFP at robo advisor Betterment.

Betterment, for example, allows clients to purchase individual financial advising sessions, and Personal Capital, Wealthsimple, and Betterment provide regular financial planning for clients with higher account balances for a management fee.

Services offered by financial advisors vary from advisor to advisor, but they may provide financial advice on any of the following topics:

In addition to investment management and financial planning, financial advisors also offer emotional support and perspective during volatile economic times. During the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in March of 2020, for instance, client demand for financial advisor contact increased by almost 50%.

Related: Find A Financial Advisor In 3 minutes

“I think that during these times, we can be a source of reason,” says Blackwell. “We can weather the storm. We’ve built this portfolio for a reason.”

When choosing a financial advisor, make sure they offer the services you’re looking for in your financial and non-financial lives.

Get In Touch With A Pre-screened Financial Advisor In 3 Minutes

It used to be that financial advisors charged fees that were a percentage of the assets they managed for you. Today advisors offer a wide variety of fee structures, which helps make their services accessible to clients of all levels of financial means.

Financial advice comes in many forms, and there are a variety of different kinds of financial professionals, so you need to do your homework. Make sure the advisor guiding your financial decisions is trustworthy and capable.

There are a few good ways to find a financial advisor. Ask friends, family and peers for recommendations when trying to find a financial advisor near you. Alternatively, look for financial advisors online. Many professional financial planning associations provide free databases of financial advisors:

When evaluating advisors, be sure to consider their credentials as well as research their backgrounds and fee structures. You can view disciplinary actions and complaints filed against financial advisors using FINRA’s BrokerCheck. And remember, just because someone is part of a financial planning association, that doesn’t mean they’re a fiduciary financial advisor.

When meeting a financial advisor for the first time, it’s important to obtain the answers to these questions and ensure you’re satisfied with their responses:

Related: Find A Financial Advisor In 3 minutes

Because of the ambiguity in the industry, you have to exercise caution to make sure you get the right financial advisor who meets your fiduciary and financial needs. That said, when you choose the right financial advisor for you, they can help you achieve your financial goals and financially protect your loved ones and their futures.

“So much of what I do in a life-centered approach to financial planning and wealth management is walk out life with people,” says Wes Brown, a CFP at CogentBlue Wealth Advisors in Knoxville, Tenn. “I think there’s value in an ongoing relationship where somebody can help you walk through the various waypoints you’re going to come to.

Looking For A Financial Advisor?

Get In Touch With A Pre-screened Financial Advisor In 3 Minutes

Financial advisors are personal finance experts who give you financial advice and manage your money. Some—but not all—are fiduciaries. A fiduciary acts only in your best financial interest.

“A financial advisor is like a coach,” says Matt Chancey, a certified financial planner (CFP) at Dempsey Lord Smith in Tampa, Fla. “It helps to have someone keep you accountable to your goals and make sure that you aren’t making any major missteps.”

A good financial investment advisor can evaluate your current situation and develop a comprehensive plan to guide you through your financial life.

“You don’t know what you don’t know,” says Marianela Collado, a CFP and certified public accountant (CPA) at Tobias Financial Advisors in Plantation, Fla. “By opening your finances up, a good financial adviser can suggest a wide range of opportunities that the client probably never thought of or wouldn’t even know to ask for.”

Though some people may think they don’t need a financial advisor until they’ve amassed at least $1 million, the amount of assets you hold shouldn’t be the sole determining factor. In fact, financial advisors work with clients of all tax brackets and backgrounds.

Financial advisor fees can vary widely. This is due to there being different methods for a financial advisor to generate their income. Some advisors are fee-only. Other advisors are commission-based. Some advisors even work on a hybrid model between the two.

It’s recommended that you research how the individual advisor you’re choosing generates their income before starting to work with them.

Financial advisors become most helpful when your financial life becomes complex. That might be when you get married, have children, get divorced, are managing many competing debts, come into an unexpected windfall or are navigating end-of-life financial decisions.

Sample exam questions - bioenergetics

Multiple choice questions are perhaps the easiest to complete - you simply put a cross in a box - however, the questions often have two answers that could, at first glance, be correct. Don't make the mistake of reading the first answer and thinking this is correct without checking all the others.

If it says 'Tick one box', you must tick one box. If you leave it blank or tick two or more boxes you will get zero marks. These multiple choice questions will not start with command words like 'Describe...' or 'Explain...'. They will be written in the form of a question like 'What...?' or 'Why...?'.

There will be more multiple choice questions on the Foundation paper.

These questions have been written by Bitesize consultants as suggestions to the types of questions that may appear in an exam paper.

Interview: Lilium's Daniel Wiegand on its eVTOL plans and progress

On a recent trip to Europe, I got in touch with the Lilium team and asked if I could come visit the company HQ outside Munich. On late notice, thanks to my slapstick organisational skills, the team went out of their way to pull together a full afternoon program for me.

This included a tour around the factory where serial production on Lilium's eVTOL "air minibus" is slated to begin once certification is complete, as well as the chance to fly the Lilium Jet around New York City in a motion-rig VR simulator.

I also had my first chance to lay eyes on a full-size mockup of the 7-seat aircraft. Let me tell you, friends, Lilium's excellent press photos simply can't capture the sheer, awe-inspiring presence of this machine. I've been looking at photos and renders for six or seven years now, but seeing this extraordinary bird in the flesh was absolutely breathtaking. People are going to lose their freakin' minds when they first see one of these things coming in for a vertical landing. It's like nothing I've ever seen before.

But the first stop on my mini-tour was a chance to sit down with Lilium Chief Engineer for Innovation and Future Programs and co-founder Daniel Wiegand, for a general chat about progress, conforming prototypes, flight testing, certification, fundraising, batteries, pricing and more. What follows is an edited transcript.

Loz Blain/New Atlas

Loz: How's it all going? Where are you at? What's happening?

Daniel Wiegand: Well, this year we're really focused on starting production of the conforming aircraft. And that's an incredibly big step for any aerospace program. You spend years of development, of design, of discussion with the regulators of which requirements you have to fulfil to be finally compliant.

And when you start production of a conforming aircraft, the word conforming means it's conforming to the aerospace standard, or to the requirements of the regulators. And that basically implies you now have the maturity on everything that's required for that.

You have to put a pin in your design: "this is the one that we're going to make."

It's a design freeze. And that means you have to have the maturity on the regulations. If you don't know what to comply with, there's no point in designing something. You have to have the maturity on technology, on supply chain and on your own design, bringing all these elements together. And this is where we are at right now.

Last summer, we had some great successes in the flight test campaign in Spain, testing the whole envelope of different maneuvers from high speed flight, to transition flight, to different tests of component failures, ground effects, how does the aircraft behave with a reflection of the ground. So these were great successes.

And for this year, the focus is now on the start of production, which means we have actually started cutting metal on the molds for the composite parts of the airframe. We're milling the first metal frames in the next couple of weeks. These will come together into a fuselage, which then, towards the fourth quarter of this year, comes to our site here, where we'll do the final assembly of the conforming aircraft.

Loz Blain/New Atlas

So there's a general rule set that needs to be conformed to but then there's also the means of compliance?

Yeah. There's basically two levels. So the top level is about 200 rules, which in our case, the European regulator has laid out in a document called SC-VTOL – special conditions for VTOL aircraft. It's the bucket for requirements, which they apply to everybody in the industry who wants to fly in Europe. And then underneath that, you have so-called means of compliance and certification plans in which you detail how you want to demonstrate compliance.

So practically, if you take a top-level requirement, like 'the aircraft needs to do a safe landing after a bird strike.' Okay, right. Understood, very simple. But there's actually a ton of questions which an engineer would come up with saying, how fast is that bird coming? From what direction? How big's the bird? What density is the bird? Which elements of the aircraft are impacted by the bird? If there's an impact on the windshield, is it acceptable to have a crack or not? All these details are described and discussed and aligned in the means of compliance and certification plans.

Sounds like a nightmare.

It's great, honestly. Initially when I came into this aerospace environment, I had the same reaction. But on the other side it's great because it gives you predictability. Some people think you design, and in the end, you certify, and there's a big question – maybe you'll get certification and maybe you won't. That's not the case. If you have an up-front agreement on the requirements you have to fulfil, plus how you'll fulfil them, you have a very clear roadmap against which you can engineer and work with your team.

That gives your team a lot of predictability in a complex environment; you won't have late changes coming in that cause hundreds of engineers to need to redesign, and suppliers needing to make changes, it's a great system. The European regulator EASA has done a great job for the industry, in the sense that they were the first globally to establish a fully consistent set of regulations for this industry. And they apply the same to everyone, so it's a level playing field.

Whereas all other countries, including the US, either don't yet have a framework, or they have proposed something in draft status, which is in consultation in the market. And they then have different rules for each applicant, which makes it very difficult to make a level playing field as well. And so here, I think they have done a really good job.

Some people think you design, and in the end, you certify, and there's a big question – maybe you'll get certification and maybe you won't. That's not the case.

And then there's China, where they're going, 'you know what, just take passengers, go ahead!'

The Chinese are quite ambitious, usually, with respect to safety, they have the target to have the highest safety regulation established in aerospace.

And yet they're letting people take flights in autonomous eVTOLs now, I think they have been for like a year.

Not commercially. It's test flights.

Some of them look an awful lot like scenic tourist operations! But in Europe and the US, nobody's doing manned flights, it's safety, safety, safety. It just seems like a totally different approach over there. Bit of an arms race scenario, maybe, where they're willing to bend the rules a bit more.

Our conforming aircraft will fly manned next year. That's going to be our first manned flight. And that's what everybody is focused on right now.

And then what else? Well, we had a big success recently with the batteries, on the cycle life. Ionblox is the designer, they provide the chemistry of the cells. And Customcells here in Germany is producing the cells. We had two big successes recently. One was that we had a US lab independently test the cycle life of the cells. Because one of the big challenges when you go for new chemistries that are more performant than traditional ones, is usually that they provide the energy and power you want, but not over many cycles.

So one of the question marks that people had out there was how many cycles do these new batteries have? And we had an amazing result. After 800 cycles, 88% of the capacity was still available. Our target was 80%. So their cells were more than 50% better than expected. And to put this in context for you, this is at least as good as a result as what you normally get with standard cells in an electric car today.

Loz Blain/New Atlas

Right, but they're much higher specific energy, is that right?

Exactly. So the cells I'm talking about have higher power for the vertical landing – and they have higher energy for the range of the aircraft. So that's one of the key enablers that also gives us an edge in this market. One year ago, we independently tested the power and energy, so that was known in public already. The last open question basically was that cycle life.

And then of course, what comes into play is: can you produce those cells? I personally recently visited our supplier Customcells in Tubingen near Stuttgart. They're next to Mercedes and Porsche. And they now have a production line there where they are shipping cells to us of this new kind on a weekly basis with an amazing quality management system and production control. They're tracking 2,000 parameters for every single cell in thickness, chemistry, alignment of the layers of the cell, and so on.

They're sharing this with us via the quality management interface, to have the full aviation traceability from a safety point of view. So you can trace back for every single cell, every single parameter.

And that'll be part of certification eventually.

Yeah, exactly. So that, for me, has been one of the most exciting pieces, because when we built this company, and we said, 'we're gonna make an electric aviation company, and we believe that battery-electric aviation will take over all regional flights,' we were making a big bet on future batteries.

Basically, we applied Moore's law to the batteries and said, 'over the last 20 years, they improved at 6% per year. So we believe they will do the same over the next 20 years.' But there was no guarantee on that. So it's a big step for us to finally have those cells in hand from the production line – with all the data, with the cycle life, the production cost and the power that comes with it.

When we built this company... We were taking a big bet on future batteries.

We write about so many battery technologies, they all sound so exciting. But there's 50 parameters that you have to look at. It's like, alright, what's the specific energy by weight, the energy density by volume? Power output per kilogram? How long does it last? Does it have some way of preventing dendrite formation? How does it go in different temperatures? Does it use exotic or expensive metals? Does it catch on fire? It's not a simple matter of "how much further would my car go." But people do get excited about the idea of new batteries. Because if you make a better battery, you can have a better phone, you can have a better car, laptop, everything.

And the special thing for these batteries is that they don't stand out in one single feature. They don't, say, have the highest energy of all. There are some which have more energy, but these have the best balance across those five key features we care about: power, energy, cycle life, production readiness, and safety.

On the train on the way over, I had a look at the AAM Reality Index. And you guys were right up the top of there for ages, but they've dropped you right down in in the last few months. Do you have a sense of what's going on?

Yeah, it's because of the funding situation.

What's the funding situation? Sorry, I can't say I pay a lot of attention to the financial side of things.

It's public knowledge, we announced that by the end of last year, we had about 205 million euros in the bank account, which is not enough to certify the aircraft. So there's a runway throughout this year, but not into the next year and the year after. So they basically said, well, the market is challenging, you guys need to do more fundraising. And until then, there's a risk.

And also, if you look at what's happening on the stock market, this is a big topic. The funding situation. We're very actively working on that in the team right now. We have lots of conversations with different types of investors ranging from strategic investors, financial investors to state funding and research grants and so on.

[Since our visit to Lilium's Munich HQ, the company has announced an additional US$250-million funding round. Details can be found in a recent press release.]

Did you ever see The Wrong Trousers, that movie with Wallace and Gromit? At the end, Gromit's sitting on that model train, going a hundred miles an hour, and he's got an armful of track pieces, and he's kind of frantically putting the track down in front of him as he goes. I always get that image in my head when I think about startup funding.

That's a pretty good example of how it happens!

Loz Blain/New Atlas

It must be exhausting, to want to be working on the product, and yet to have to run around asking for money all over the place

It's actually what we're used to. If you build a startup, you know, you need to raise money and you need investors. It's part of the job. From our perspective, it's like, okay, every year, we had to raise money. Now, it's the seventh time we have to raise money, and we're raising money.

We have the process, we have the conversations, we have the due diligence done, we're in negotiation with people. It's not so unique. What is unique is always the new context. So you always have a different economic environment, you have right now very high interest rates. So there's less money in the market, you have to shift a little bit which type of investor you are addressing. But overall, it's part of building new technologies that they need to get funded.

And you've got every faith you're on track to get through certification?

I think we are extremely well positioned. If I look at the rest of the planet, where either the regulation isn't there or the product is not mature or whatever, we are incredibly well positioned. Right now we have an extremely experienced team with respect to actually certifying aircraft, our whole leadership team are all ex-aerospace people, who've certified engines and aircraft. So the team is great. The team underneath is great with 450 aerospace engineers.

We have the supply chain together now – that's really, really big. I think sometimes it's underestimated, but 90% of the value of these aircraft gets produced and created in the supply chain. So having having all these guys under contract from the batteries, to the airframe, the engines, the avionics, etcetera, that's big. We have the regulation, we have the design and the technology in place. Flight testing went very well. So we have 100% confidence on that.

Awesome. I like the fact that you're going for something bigger than anybody else as well – this idea that you can fly farther and take more people, and cover a different use case from what everybody else is doing.

I've been thinking about where this came from. Because we were alone here when we founded the company and took these decisions on regional flight and more capacity, etc. We didn't yet know about the rest of the industry. And then later, we saw that there were actually a few other companies working on these eVTOLs as well. But we didn't know each other yet.

I think part of it is the European settlement structure. So if you look into a place like Sao Paulo or LA, you can imagine it could be a smart idea to take an eVTOL across the city. If you grew up here in Munich, you don't think it's a good idea to fly from the north of Munich to the south of Munich, because the city functions so well, it takes you like 35 minutes by car or by subway.

Loz Blain/New Atlas

Well you've got good public transport here. You can't have that in the USA; public transport is for communists, you see.

I don't know what's the reason for it! But when we did our calculation, we said, 'well, if we did fly across town, we would spend five minutes in the cab, five minutes from the cab to the plane, five minutes flying across town, then another five minutes from the plane to the cab, and five minutes in the cab to my destination'. And I'm like, OK, this whole stack is super annoying, as a journey, because I'm always worried I'll miss the next one. And I didn't save a minute of time.

But on the other side, when we're traveling to neighboring cities here in Europe, that's where the pain starts, where it takes hours, and you're in traffic jams. And then you think like OK, if we could fly regional, it would be amazing, then we would save hours of trip time.

And that's how we then said, OK, we want to focus on regional eVTOL, and then took the decision for more capacity, because when you go regional, and you save one or two hours of time, then you can also start bundling people. Which doesn't work on very short trips – like, Uber tried this a lot in the US with Uber Pool. It never really took off. Because when trips are too short, people are not willing to wait 10 minutes for someone else to join. You just want to go. But if you save two hours, you're willing to wait. The longer the trip goes, the more you can bundle. That's what traditional airlines do all the time, bundle 200 people into a 2,000-mile flight.

Lilium

Yeah, just to remind me, are you guys planning to launch your own service or manufacture and sell?

We had originally planned to launch a service and the production. We went away from that during the listing and said, we're going to partner with others to operate the airplane and launch the service. Because it's just too big of an investment step. Right now, part of our financing and the solution to the funding topic is that we're getting down payments from customers. You don't get down payments on an airplane ticket three years in advance! You get a down payment from an airline or from an executive customer who wants to buy an airplane.

And it's not just this, there's also the skill. For example, there are established players who operate in helicopters and airplanes every day. They know this inside out. They know the customers, they know the routes, they have the infrastructure. And we see right now that among the 640 pre-orders we have, many of them come from these existing operators who are looking for a replacement for the helicopters.

Our airplane basically does the mission of a helicopter, but you have a cabin of twice the size, you have much less noise and vibration, you are much safer from the redundancy. You have lower noise emissions to the community, and you're emission free. So they look at it saying we have everything but we need to fill that gap of this machine. And partnering with these guys is super valuable for us because they have all these ingredients already.

Lilium

I notice you didn't mention that they should be heaps cheaper as well. Is that still the projection?

Absolutely, yeah, I think there's a number of reasons. The electric powertrain is cheaper in general than a gas turbine powertrain because you have way fewer parts, you have much less wear and tear, you don't have the safety issues of a helicopter where every single part is a single point of failure. You have all these mechanics and gearboxes, and if something fails, very often the helicopter comes down.

In eVTOLs, you have distributed propulsion, so you have redundant powertrains, and that reduces the criticality of all these parts. So, that reduces the cost, then the cost of energy is of course, much lower with flying with electricity.

And then also, the sheer economies of scale come into play. So, when you have lower noise emissions, better safety, no CO2, you have an overall more attractive product, which gets used more often, and your production numbers are going up. But on the other side, I would say, we also need to be cautious not to over-promise to the market.

There's people promising that you can fly like five times lower priced than helicopters today. That's very hard to achieve. Because if you look at the whole stack of costs, the pilot and landing fees and insurance and the airframe, these are all the same. It's still a composite airframe, it's still a highly skilled pilot. These things can change over time with autonomy, they can change with production, scale, etc. But we expect that initially, it will be a bit lower cost than a helicopter and then it will come down at some point to something closer to a high-speed rail ticket.

But I think one needs to be realistic about the timeframe over which this will happen. It can't be like a high-speed rail ticket on the first straightaway.

Lilium

And to get there, you'll need to be manufacturing at more of an automotive type scale than a typical aerospace scale.

It won't be anything like automotive scale. If you look into the market forecasts, like scanning what is externally predicted by Morgan Stanley and others, and comparing that to our internal predictions where we usually want to be more conservative. You start to see that even with one aircraft, you can do an immense amount of passenger miles per year. So you don't need millions of eVTOLs to serve the world market – even in 20 years.

The number you'd need is a big number, much bigger than anything we've had so far in aerospace, but automotive is in the millions. eVTOLs is in the thousands, to tens of thousands. That's predicted, we're not there yet. We need to start humble, start small, make money with an existing market and grow from there. That's our strategy right now. Because everything else is predictions. But you have to get a real customer, giving you a real down payment.

You have to get a real ticket from EASA!

Exactly. And then, of course, we think we can, in the shuttle market, leverage the fact that we have more capacity on board and that will help us further reduce the price on the airplane.

The new batteries. Have you flown them yet?

No, we're torturing them on all the safety tests right now. We'll fly them in the conforming prototype.

And with that, our time's up and it's on to the next stop. Huge thanks to Meredith, Christine, Daniel and the Lilium team for putting together a visit for me. More to come on this visit shortly!

Source: Lilium