Do You Believe The Electric Aircraft Come True In Future?
Electric cars are in a way the hope of dumping some emissions from our atmosphere, but they are not the only means of transport that pose a problem at this level. Airplanes suppose a good dose of air pollution and the idea of electric airplanes already haunts many minds, one of them that of designer Joe Doucet and his concept of an electric plane focused on efficiency and not so much on breaking speed records. The pollution generated by air transport has become more than ever a topical issue, in the context of COP25 and the notorious trips of activist Greta Thunberg, who prefers to travel on trains and catamarans to avoid generating that carbon footprint produced by aircraft. This bad image for commercial flights, together with the wave of decarburization and electrification experienced by various sectors, including the automotive industry, makes us wonder whether it would be possible to manufacture electric airplanes.
The functional model has been built through by rapid prototyping services company. Several recent cases of electric aircraft in tests such as that of the Harbor Air Company, it does not seem unreasonable to think about the implementation of this type of technology in the near future. However, it is enough to delve a little into the details of these experiments that are being carried out to realize that there are still years, or rather decades, to be able to talk about commercial flights with the current characteristics powered by electric power.
Electric plane flies successfully… For 10 minutes
The Canadian company Harbor Air announced last Wednesday that it had successfully executed a test flight of the so-called ePlane, in collaboration with magniX. In addition, they assure that they could start selling tickets for one of these planes in 2022, but to how many? The firm assured that the ePlain was the first flight of an electric commercial airplane, although the aircraft had only 6 seats and the flight lasted a total of 10 minutes.The CEO of magniX, Roei Ganzarski, assures that these prototyping models allow savings both for the cost of fuel and for the fact that electric motors are simpler and therefore require less maintenance.
Regarding projects carried out by airlines, the ‘low-cost’ Easy Jet and Airbus agreed to develop a joint investigation to analyze the potential of hybrid and electric aircraft, although it is likely that 100% electric will arrive long after hybrids. Airbus, in particular, has participated in an aeronautical show in Dubai presenting 100% electric models, but they were competition aircraft, that is, very small prototype. The engines that these aircraft carry do not allow them to fly for more than 5 or 10 minutes, as reported by El País.
Easy Jet, for its part, partnered in 2017 with the American start-up Wright Electric to develop electric aircraft, also intended for short-haul routes. In any case, Johan Lundgren, CEO of Easy Jet, dates in 2030 its first operations with electric or hybrids. Easy Jet is ambitious in terms of the number of passengers they could carry, which amounts to 180 by that date. The reality is that in a few years, there could be cases of travel routes with hybrid aircraft, but limited to a small number of passengers and short trips, a prototype test very far from that offered by traditional commercial aircraft.
Batteries remain short
These prototype models share the same problem: batteries. For these to allow for long trips, they would have to be too large and heavy to be efficient. The chief technology officer of the United States United Technologies, Paul Eremenko, assures that unless there is a radical paradigm shift and still to be invented in energy storage, we will depend on hydrocarbons for the foreseeable future.
Eremenko said this at the Paris Air-Show held last July, an event in which the head of Airbus technology, Grazia Vittadini, also commented that even assuming enormous advances in battery technology, with batteries that are 30 times more efficient and Dense in energy than they are today, it would only be possible to fly an A320 for a fifth of its route and half the load. The A320 that Vittadini refers to is a passenger model that can carry 100 to 240 passengers. At this show in the French capital, the Israeli startup Eviation presented a 100% electric prototyping model that generated great excitement since, unlike others, it promised to fly 1,000 km. Of course, with a capacity of 9 passengers.
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