Why We Still Don't Have Electric Planes

What could a future with

electric

air

planes

be like? $25 tickets, quieter airports or even shorter runways. Companies

have

been betting on battery-powered aircraft for this cleaner future. But although

electric

air

planes

have

been around since the 1970s, they haven't really taken off. So what keeps them grounded? In the late 19th century, two French army officers experimented with electricity to power an aircraft, but ran into problems when the battery simply couldn't hold enough energy. This would become a recurring problem for the next 100 years. When nickel-cadmium batteries were invented, the first electric-powered flight took off, but it only lasted less than 15 minutes.

Then in the 1980s, lithium-ion batteries were invented. They could store more energy than ever, giving rise to planes like the Solar Impulse 2. Starting in 2015, the solar-powered plane spent 16 months flying around the world, except it flew at an average speed of 28 to 34 mph. . Solar Impulse 2 is part of a movement in recent years to develop alternative energy, especially as people and governments began to realize how bad flying was for the environment. The aviation industry emitted around 1 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2019. That's about 2.5% of global emissions. It may not seem like much, but it is almost as much as the entire continent of South America emits in a year.

Kevin Noertker: We need to make changes in the industry, and electrification is one of the big trends that will hopefully reduce that burden. Narrator: Electric airplanes have been on people's minds for a while, but two big problems are keeping electricity grounded. First, the technology is not ready yet. When you're trying to get an electric plane off the ground, you want a battery that has a lot of power in a small package, but... Carolina Anderson: Batteries aren't as efficient as gas batteries, and they probably aren't. It will be around for a while. Narrator: A battery's efficiency, or its ability to retain energy, is measured in specific energy.

Currently, even the best batteries have a specific energy of only 250 watt-hours per kilogram, but we have to get closer to 800 to start really flying, and that is

still

nothing compared to the specific energy of jet fuel, which It is almost 12,000 watts. -hours per kilogram. Think of it like those computers from the '80s. They were huge, but much less powerful than the fancy ones we have today. Right now, batteries are like those computers from the 80s. They're not as powerful as they should be, and not only are they big, they're also heavy. So if you want to add more power to a plane, you need a bigger battery, and for that plane to fly despite the weight, you'll need an even bigger battery that's more powerful, but that means more weight.

And then you'll need an even bigger battery to make up for that weight. Oh, you get the point. But even if engineers design a plane with shortcomings in battery technology in mind, they have to take on the industry's second hurdle: certification. In the United States, that means getting permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to test and fly an electric plane. Companies have to prove that every inch of their planes is safe by passing a series of tests, one of which is making sure the battery cells don't catch fire. Roei Ganzarski: If something goes wrong, you can't stop.

You can't pull over to the side of the road. There's only one place that plane can go. And that's why the regulatory rigor is much higher, the requirements for reliability, redundancy and security are much higher for good reason. You have no alternative. Narrator: The FAA changed its rules in 2016 to allow electric propulsion systems on airplanes built for up to 19 passengers. The real problem, however, is that certification, even with these modifications, takes years, so companies have gotten creative. They have started modernizing old planes to get certified faster. Ganzarski: It's removing the entire old gas-guzzling, emissions-producing engine and its fuel system, and replacing that space and weight with an electric propulsion system.

Narrator: The modernization has been carried out in phases. The first phase was from the Slovenian company Pipistrel. It created the world's first all-electric two-seat aircraft in 2007 by putting an electric motor in a glider. Tine Tomažič: Gliders are safe by definition, even without a running engine, so we were able to experiment without putting anyone at risk or harming anyone. Narrator: Today, those planes are used for pilot training. The second phase: a hybrid. The Los Angeles company Ampaire replaced one of the two engines of a 1973 Cessna with an electric one. Ampaire expects its new plane, the Electric Eel, to be certified for commercial flights by 2021.

And finally, in Vancouver, electric motor maker MagniX and Vancouver-based airline Harbor Air flew a modernized 62-year-old plane . A 15-minute test flight in December 2019 made it the world's first all-electric commercial airliner to fly. It showed that electricity could really take off. The goal of both companies now is to electrify the rest of Harbor Air's fleet, made up of more than 40 seaplanes, and certify it before the end of 2021. The modernization therefore seems perfect. The problem, however, is that it limits you to what the airframe is already built for, so if the original engine weighs, say, 1,000 pounds and you remove it, then...

Ganzarski: I only have 1,000 pounds to put. Back inside, right? I can't make the total package heavier. Narrator: Electric motors are smaller and lighter than gasoline ones, but remember, those batteries are heavy. Ganzarski: Then you lose range because the batteries, for the same amount of energy, are much heavier than the fuel. Narrator: So, while Harbor Air and MagniX figured out the weight balance on their plane, the range was affected. Your electric plane can travel more than 100 miles, a little less than the distance from Seattle to Vancouver, but for electric planes to be successful in the long term, they will have to travel further.

Israeli company Eviation might have a solution. Instead of modernizing an old plane, its engineers built a plane from scratch. The nine-seat aircraft, Alice, was designed around the battery to reduce weight. Omer Bar-Yohay: That battery is literally everywhere. It's under the floor, in the wings, in the fuselage in different places. Narrator: Alice could, in theory, fly up to 650 miles, about a flight from Las Vegas to Denver, but because she was built from scratch, getting her certification is taking longer. Bar-Yohay: We are very confident that we will flight test the aircraft in early 2020 and we believe that from then on the certification process will take about two years.

Narrator: Every electric plane in development is different, but they all have one thing in common: They pursue flights of less than 500 miles. And while it may not seem like an impressive distance, these short-range electric planes could solve a major problem in travel. In 2018, just under half of all air tickets sold globally were for flights less than 500 miles, but instead of using small, efficient planes designed for these shorter routes, we often use expensive planes built for fly thousands of miles. These planes are most efficient if they can fly for a long period of time, but on a 50-minute flight, these planes go up and then down.

Currently, a 109-mile flight from Los Angeles to San Diego emits about 110 pounds of CO2. Bar-Yohay: For a technically savvy person, that's crazy, because we're using the wrong tools for the job. Narrator: Over the past four decades, regional flying with commercial aircraft became so expensive for airlines in the US, Europe and Australia that they began to discontinue service to regional airports. Today, of the 20,000 FAA-approved runways in the United States, only 2.5% are currently active. The remaining regional airports are running at a loss or even bankrupt, but electric planes could be a solution and the infrastructure for them already exists.

Omer says 11,000 of those 20,000 American runways could support an electric plane, which is much cheaper to operate. Alice could save about $800 per flight hour compared to a normal turboprop aircraft. Noertker: The number of potential destinations is multiplied by ten, without communities suffering significant burdens such as noise and pollution. Narrator: As for the distant future, electric aviation could take all sorts of forms. Uber is already working on an electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, or eVTOL, that could pick you up right at your home and take you to an airport. Even big players like Airbus, Boeing and Rolls-Royce are betting on this future.

Tomažič: We went on a journey that is like crawling, walking, running, jumping. Now we are in the walking phase. The working part will be larger electric planes that fly longer distances, and the big leaps, coming in about a decade, will be the eVTOL segment, which is vertical takeoff and landing. Narrator: Everyone we spoke to said that's

still

about 15 years away, and now that an electric plane has proven successful, those in the industry are hopeful that investment in battery development will start coming. Because to break that infinite power and weight loop we were talking about, we'll need more efficient batteries for electric airplanes to really take off.

Bar-Yohay: The question is: when does it make economic sense and who has the billions it will take to bring a product like this to market 15 years from now? So is it the future? Absolutely.