Reported on an electric airplane going forward. I’ve spoken with Siemens and know they have a serious propulsion system!
By Steven Ashley
Several years ago, when the auto industry faced government pressure to minimize its environmental footprint by reducing fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions this went down. For several manufacturers turned first to hybrid-electric and then battery-electric powertrains. Like that now move works with Chevy Volts and Nissan Leafs.
Today, confronted with substantially the same environmental mandates as car companies they decided. So the aviation industry has begun gearing up to use those same green power plants to propel aircraft.
The electric car is so yesterday; that is because electric airplanes are coming.
EADS (European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company), the parent firm of Airbus, for example, has been flying a battery electric-powered ultralight aircraft for the last year. Even at the recent Paris Air Show it introduced a series-hybrid motor glider as well as an ambitious future concept for an all-electric, 50-seat passenger plane powered by superconducting drive motors. Last fall, Boeing released details of a NASA-funded effort to use a hybrid battery-electric/gas turbine propulsion system to power a future 737-class commercial transport.
A few months earlier, at the 2010 Oshkosh event, both Cessna and Sikorsky announced plans to fly. They announced some time in 2010 will have electric-powered demonstrators. Nothing yet. Yet at CES last year 2018. For I saw a light plane and a light helicopter.
Boeing’s SUGAR Volt (Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research) twin-engine future concept airliner.
The 737-size transport would be powered by hybrid propulsion system. Thereby one that would combine gas turbine and battery/electric motor technology. Courtesy Boeing
