Hydrogen-powered planes were voted as one of breakthrough technologies this year.
Some companies such as Ampaire earlier this year has completed a test flight of its Eco Caravan, a plug-in hybrid-electric plane. By adding just a small battery, the company says, it can cut fuel consumption by 50 to 70% compared with conventional planes.
As mentioned below batteries are much heavier than jet fuel is. Given the current battery technology the small planes could carry a few passengers a few hundred miles. But their theoretical range gets eaten up by something called reserve requirements. Basically, according to regulators, a plane needs to have enough fuel on board for emergencies. If there’s an issue, it needs to be able to circle for a while, or even make it to a nearby airport to land. So while a 19-seat electric plane in theory might be able to fly 160 miles, factoring in reserve requirements (1) means the usable range might actually be more like 30 miles—a long bike ride.
By carrying reserve requirements in jet fuel and having only enough battery power for the planned flight, a hybrid-electric plane would get a lot of bang for its buck. Ampaire hopes to get certification for its system next year.
Hesham
(1) Performance Analysis of Regional Electric Aircraft.
On Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 2:56 PM Christian Huitema <huitema@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 3/31/2023 3:04 AM, Hesham ElBakoury wrote:
> Companies are lookinto building electric flights. For example, hundreds of
> them are building *eVTOLs*: electric vertical take-off and landing
> vehicles. It’s a horrible acronym for small aircraft that take off and land
> like a helicopter and fly like a plane.
>
> I do not know when we will have an electric plane that travel from San
> Francisco or Europe to Japan?
In a fairly long time.
The current electric planes "in production" are typically low range, low
capacity -- from 1 seat to 4 seat. The next planes to come to market
will probably address the "short flight" market, a few hundred miles.
Further than that, and the weight of the batteries becomes prohibitive.
Europe to Japan would require some major advances in battery technology.
For long distance, "climate conscious" planes are much more likely to
burn some kind of green fuel like bio-diesel (or "bio kerosene") or
maybe hydrogen. We might see electric powered airships, modern version
of the Zeppelins, but these would be much slower than current airliners.
-- Christian Huitema
