what could a future with electric planes
look like $25 tickets quieter airports
or even shorter runways companies have
been betting on battery-powered planes
for this cleaner future but even though
electric planes have been around since
the 1970s they haven't really taken off
so what's keeping them grounded in the
late 1800s - French army officers
experimented with electricity to propel
an airship but they ran into problems
when the battery just couldn't hold
enough energy this would become a
recurring problem for the next 100 years
when nickel-cadmium batteries were
invented the first flight with an
electric motor took off but it only
lasted less than 15 minutes then in the
1980s lithium-ion batteries were
invented they could store more power
than ever before leading to planes like
the Solar Impulse - starting in 2015 the
solar-powered aircraft spent 16 months
flying around the world except it flew
at an average speed of 28 to 34 miles
per hour Solar Impulse - is part of a
movement in recent years to develop
alternative energies especially when
people and governments started realizing
just how bad flying was for the
environment the aviation industry
emitted about a billion tons of co2 in
2019 that's about 2.5 percent of global
emissions that might not sound like a
lot but it's almost as much as the
entire continent of South America emits
in a year we need to make changes to to
the industry and electrification is one
of the big trends which will hopefully
reduce that burden electric planes have
been on people's mind for a while but
two big problems are keeping electric
grounded first the technology is not
quite ready when you're trying to get an
electric plane off the ground you want a
battery that packs a lot of punch in a
little package but batteries are not as
efficient as gas and you're probably not
gonna be for a while a batteries
efficiency or ability to hold power is
measured in specific energy right now
even the best batteries have a specific
energy of only 250 watt hours per
kilogram but we have to get closer to
800 to really start flying
that is still nothing compared to jet
fuel specific energy which is nearly
12,000 watt hours per kilogram think
about it like those computers from the
80s they were huge but way less powerful
than the sleek ones we have today right
now batteries are like those 80s
computers they're not as powerful as
they need to be and they're not just big
they're also heavy so if you want to add
more power to a plane you need to get a
bigger battery and to get that plane
airborne despite the wait leave me even
bigger battery that's more powerful but
that means more weight and then you'll
need an even bigger battery to offset
that way you get the point but even if
engineers design a plane around the
shortfalls in battery tech they have to
take on the industry second hurdle
certification in the u.s. that means
getting permission from the Federal
Aviation Administration to test and fly
an electric plane companies have to
prove every inch of their aircraft is
safe passing a series of tests one of
which is to make sure the battery cells
won't catch fire if something goes wrong
you can't stop you can't pull the side
of the road there's only one place for
that airplane to go and so the
regulatory stringency is much higher the
requirements for reliability redundancy
and safety are much higher for a good
reason
you have no alternate the FAA amended
its rules in 2016 to allow electric
propulsion systems and airplanes built
for up to 19 passengers the real problem
though is that sort of keishon even with
these amendments takes years so
companies have gotten creative they've
started to retrofit old planes to get
certified quicker you're taking out the
entire old gas guzzling emission
creating engine and its fuel system and
replacing that space and weight with an
electric repulsion system retrofitting
has happened in phases the first phase
was from shalini and company pipistrelle
it created the world's first
all-electric two-seater plane back in
2007 by putting an electric engine in a
glider gliders are safe to fly by
definition even without functioning an
engine so we were able to experiment
without putting anybody at risk or do
harm to anyone today those planes are
used for pilot training
the second phase a hybrid los angeles
company and pair replace one of the two
engines in the 1973 Cessna with an
electric one
ampair hopes to get its new plane the
electric eel certified for commercial
flights by 2021 and finally over in
Vancouver electric motor manufacturer
Magni acts and vancouver-based airline
Harbor air flew a retrofitted 62 year
old plane a 15 minute test flight in
December 2019 made it the world's first
all-electric commercial plane to fly it
proved that electric could actually take
off the two company's goal is now to
electrify the rest of hardware's fleet
more than 40 sea planes and have it
certified by the end of 2021 so
retrofitting seems perfect the problem
though is that it limits you to what the
plane structure is already built for so
if the original motor is say a thousand
pounds and you remove it then back in
right I can't make the total package
heavier electric motors are smaller and
lighter than gas ones but remember those
batteries are heavy so you lose range
because batteries for the same amount of
power are so much heavier than fuel so
while harbor air in Magni acts figured
out the balance of weight in their plane
the range took a hit their electric
plane can go over a hundred miles a
little less than the distance from
Seattle to Vancouver but for electric
planes to be successful long term
they'll have to go farther Israeli
company aviation might have a solution
instead of retrofitting an old plane its
engineers built a plane from scratch the
nine seater plane Alice was designed
around the battery to reduce weight
that's batteries literally all over the
place it's under the floor it's in the
wings it's in the in the fuselage in
different locations allison theory could
fly up to 650 miles roughly a flight
from Las Vegas to Denver but because it
was built from the ground up getting
your certified is taking longer we're
very confident that we will be testing
the plane in flight early 2020 and
believe that from that point on the
certification process will take about
two years each electric plane and
development is different but they all
have one thing in common they're going
after flights under 500 miles and while
it might not seem like an impressive
distance these short-range electric
planes could solve a major problem in
travel in 2018 a little less than half
of all air tickets sold globally or for
flights under 500 miles
but instead of using small efficient
planes designed for these shorter routes
we often use expensive airliners built
to fly thousands of miles these planes
are most efficient if they're able to
cruise for a long period of time but on
a flight that's 50 minutes
these planes go up and they come right
back down currently a hundred and nine
mile flight from Los Angeles to San
Diego emits about a hundred and ten
pounds of co2 for a technical savvy
person that's an insanity because we're
using the wrong tools for the job in the
last four decades flying regional with
commercial jets got so expensive for
Airlines in the US Europe and Australia
that they began stopping service to
regional airports today of the 20,000
FAA approved runways in the u.s. only
2.5 percent are currently active the
regional airports left are running at a
loss or even going bankrupt but electric
flames could be effects and there's
already an infrastructure for them Omar
says 11 thousand of those 20,000 u.s.
runways could support an electric plane
which is a lot cheaper to operate Alice
could save about $800 per flight hour
compared to a normal turboprop plane
it's a tenfold increase in the number of
potential destinations all the while not
having the significant burdens on the
communities of noise and pollutions as
for the distant future Electric Aviation
could come in all kinds of forms uber is
already working on electrical vertical
takeoff and landing vehicle or evey toll
that could pick you up right at your
house and fly you to an airport even big
players like Airbus Boeing and
rolls-royce are betting on this future
we set up on a journey that's akin to
crawling walking running leaping we're
now in the face of walking the running
part will be the bigger electric
aeroplanes flying longer distances and
the big leaps coming in a decade or so
will be the evita segment which is
vertical takeoff and landing everyone we
talked to said that's still about 15
years off and now that an electric plane
has actually proven successful those in
the industry are hopeful that investment
in the battery development will start
rolling in because to break out of that
infinite power and weight loop we were
talking about we're gonna
more efficient batteries for electric
planes to really take off the question
is when does it make economic sense and
who has the many billions it will take
to bring a product like this to market
in 15 years time so is it the future
absolutely
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