Airbus investigating battery powered, ducted fan airliners

The Screamliner can't make it a year with out catching on fire. Now Airbus is going to try to one up them with a plane powered with nothing but batties?
 
Hmmmm, yeah, I dunno about this. Electric cars and golf carts can run out of power and you stop and recharge them, but I don't see stopping a plane in a cloud and recharging it.
 
Certain electic car batteries also burst into flame. Battery tech is not up to the task yet.
 
I think the costs would be astronomical... especially when it came to replacing the batteries in a plane the size of let's say, the A-310 or a Boeing 737. Now small planes like the one pictured in the article... that may be feasible. But I'll bet the runtime for such a craft wouldn't be that long. The batteries would have to be pretty light to get even an hour of runtime.

BB686
 
I think the future is in turbo/electric (TE) systems. You use one or two gas generators (i.e. turboshaft engines) to drive an electric generator that powers a series (e.g. 10-12 for a 100 pax airliner) small diameter electric fans. Boeing and Airbus have both considered this technology over battery powered designs, which are very heavy and need the entire battery replaced after a given flight (or rather, removed, recharged and replaced). The downside to TE systems is the materials used for conductivity. The technology to make TE effective for airliners is projected 10-20 years away by NASA's own admission. Small lab designs are already running. Who knows when real Ejets (Electric not Embraer) will be flying in to our regional airports?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top