This is an electric powered plane.
It’s one of many being unveiled this year.
So is the aviation industry becoming more sustainable
and when will the world’s jet-setters actually start flying electric?
This is the world’s first commercial all-electric passenger aircraft.
It’s a prototype, but the aircraft’s creator, Israeli company Eviation,
says it’s expected to enter service in 2022.
This is the Eviation Alice.
The unique selling proposition of this plane, besides the many benefits of it being a very
sustainable aircraft with zero emissions, is actually that it makes economic sense.
This plane will cost $200 of flight hour to operate,
a fraction of what a similarly sized and similar performance aircraft would cost to operate
and really this is the business case and this is the reason we started the company.
The fuel bill for the global airline industry last year was estimated to have totaled $180 billion.
In 2019, the fuel bill is forecast to rise to $206 billion, accounting for 25% of airlines’ operating expenses.
The impact of fuel prices on airlines’ revenues is clear.
Since 2010, the rise and fall in the price of fuel has had a direct correlation
with airlines increasing and decreasing profit margins.
So, this is inside The Alice.
Careful not to bump your head, it’s pretty small in here, pretty tight.
I can just about get into the seat, but the windows are massive.
It’s like something out of the future.
But while it may look futuristic, The Alice isn’t the first electrically powered plane
to take to the skies or even the most environmentally friendly.
Back in 2016, The Solar Impulse 2 was the first solar-powered aircraft
to travel all the way around the globe without a drop of fuel.
But while that was a single pilot, endurance flight, The Alice, which can fly 650 miles
on a single charge at 250 knots, was designed for the everyday traveler.
That means you could get all the way from Paris to Barcelona without stopping to charge up.
Is that this plane’s long term purpose, to be a regional commuting plane?
We see this plane as one of the first opportunities to create a competitive
ticket price for flying the distances that you would normally drive.
U.S. regional carrier Cape Air has already put in a double digit order for the Alice plane.
And British low-cost airline EasyJet is working with American startup Wright Electric.
EasyJet says it will start using its electric aircraft,
which fly distances of less than 300 miles, in its regular services by 2027.
The drive behind it, is it cost cutting, is it the environment, or is it both?
The drive behind it is clearly the environment.
We have to do something different.
I wouldn’t say cost-cutting.
I would say we need to consider, you know, our strength as an airline is value for money.
There’s a tremendous demand for lower emissions aviation among consumers and also among airlines.
Lower fuel consumption means lower costs as well, that’s one of the nice things about this space.
The environmentalists and technology people are very aligned
because everybody wants to lower fuel consumption.
But what about airlines that need to fly longer distances?
Around 80% of aviation CO2 emissions are emitted from flights traveling over 1,500 kilometers, about 930 miles.
As of yet, there is no practical alternative mode of transport.
The global aviation industry produces around 2% of all human-induced carbon dioxide emissions
and 12% of transport- related CO2 emissions.
The industry has volunteered to cap its overall emissions by 2020, and halve emissions by 2050.
One report found Easyjet is currently the major airline with the lowest carbon emissions per passenger.
By 2020, EasyJet's aircraft are expected to be emitting 75 grams of CO2 per passenger kilometer,
less than half of Korean Air’s emissions.
But there are still a number of challenges for shorter distances too.
For example, capacity.
Alice holds just nine passengers and two crew members.
Whereas popular planes used for short-haul flights, such as the Airbus A320 and the Boeing 737,
can easily seat more than 100 passengers and cover over a thousand miles.
The benefits of electric planes go beyond a reduction in fuel emissions.
These students from Delft University in the Netherlands are taking part in GoFly,
a $2 million competition to create the world’s first personal flying device.
Their team Silverwing’s machine is electrically powered, something they chose over a traditional
jet propulsion engine for a number of reasons.
It’s fully electric powered so we have an electric drivetrain.
We could have easily powered it by a traditional motor,
but we really don’t want to be the trend followers, we want to be the disruptors.
So with an electric motor, you can just spool up very fast.
There is no lag between the performance control.
There is less vibration because you don’t have an IC engine in it.
There is also lower noise which is a crucial aspect.
In aerospace, we focus on sustainability quite a bit and efficiency quite a bit
and it’s something more and more students are worried about and focusing on.
There are some hurdles to overcome but in the distant future we are definitely thinking of electrifying aviation.
These students and many others have put a lot of time and effort
into developing a single personal flying machine prototype.
But commercial aircraft is a much larger undertaking, so who’s ultimately funding it?
So the development costs won’t impact the passengers who buy tickets to go on the plane?
Bringing a new plane to market is a gargantuan task.
The cost of this development has been significant
but direct operating costs is the main driver of ticket prices.
Energy and maintenance is really what you pay for, and the fact this plane is electric
really hits those two nails on the head.
Our goal is to have lower costs because fuel is such an expensive part of an airline.
If we can lower the fuel costs of being in an airplane, it’s better for the environment
because that’s less carbon in the air and it’s lower costs for consumers.
So when will we see electric aircraft up in the air?
In our lifetimes we’ll actually have the chance to see all aviation potentially be electric.
We hope to have our airplane on the market, entry into service in the next decade or so.
This could be certified in today’s regulatory environment, we don’t need any rule changes
but it will take time and I expect no-one will be able to buy a ticket for this before sometime 2022.
I’ve come from a time when electric aircraft was impossible,
to an idea but now we’ve turned that corner where everyone's saying this is going to,
has to happen and it’s just a question of when.
Electric planes have been talked about as a possibility for many years, but seeing them
on the tarmac and even up in the air, shows that this could be a practical solution to
the economic and environmental challenges that the industry is facing.
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