In 2019, air transport was responsible for 2.5% of global carbon emissions, and that proportion could triple that by 2050.
Although some airlines have begun to compensate for their contributions to carbon emissions to the atmosphere, there is still Substantial emissions reductions needed. Since electric aircraft can achieve the scale of transformation required, many companies are racing to develop them.
Electric propulsion engines will reduce direct carbon emissions, but they can also reduce fuel costs by up to 90%, maintenance by up to 50%, and noise by up to about 70%.
Among the companies involved in electric aviation are Airbus, Ampaire, MagniX, and Eviation.
All of them are testing aircraft for private flights, corporate and passenger travel, and are seeking authorization from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Cape Air, one of the largest regional airlines, expects to be a first customer; It has plans to purchase Evasion, an electric nine-passenger Alice plane.
Dan Wolf, chief executive of Cape Air, says he is interested in realizing environmental benefits, but also in potential savings in operating costs.
In general, electric motors have a longer life than the hydrocarbon-fuel engines of current Cape Air aircraft; Electric motors require maintenance every 20,000 hours, as opposed to 2,000 hours for engines running on hydrocarbon fuel.
And front-wheel drive motors aren't the only ones that will run on electric.
On the NASA X-57 Maxwell electric plane, which is still under development, conventional wings are being replaced by shorter ones equipped with a set of distributed electric propellers.
In conventional aircraft, the wings must be large enough to lift The plane is flying at low speed, but the large surface area increases resistance at higher speeds.
Electric propellants increase lift at take off, allowing for smaller wings and increasing overall efficiency of the aircraft.
For the foreseeable future, electric aircraft travel will be restricted to distances.
The energy-to-weight ratio of the best batteries currently available is much lower compared to conventional fuels; The energy density of electric aircraft is 250 watt hours per kilogram, compared to 12,000 watt hours per kilogram in the case of jet fuel.
Thus, the batteries needed for a long trip will be much heavier than conventional fuels and will take up more space compared to this fuel.
Almost half of the flights traveled worldwide are less than 800 kilometers, which is within the distance battery-powered electric aircraft are expected to travel by 2025.
Electric aviation faces obstacles in terms of cost and regulatory issues, but the investors, incubators, companies and governments that are enthusiastic about the progress made in this technology are making huge investments in its development.
About $ 250 million was pumped into startups operating in electric aviation between 2017 and 2019. Currently around 170 electric aircraft projects are underway.
Most of the electric planes are designed for special flights, corporate and passenger travel, but Airbus says it plans to produce planes with a capacity of 100 passengers, so that they are ready to fly by 2030.
I've always been enthusiastic about electric planes. The main difficulty is that if a plane were to run fully on batteries, those batteries need to weigh a ton.