Between hydrogen-powered aircraft, sustainable aviation fuels, electric aircraft — and hybrids of all the future greener options to power the airliners of the future — where does electric aviation fit into the puzzle? With several developments recently, including key orders in principle from airlines like Finnair and United, we go big on what may well be the future of smaller aircraft.
As electric airframer Heart Aerospace says, “it is unlikely that we will be able to cross the Atlantic on battery-powered passenger planes any time soon. However, electric aircraft will play an important role in decarbonising short-haul air travel.”
Beyond flight trainers and the new category of eVTOL aircraft and towards airliners, the key constraint — certainly in the timeframe to 2030 and perhaps 2040 — is batteries, and particularly the ratio of their weight, capacity and physical size.
That’s why most of the electric aircraft discussion is around smaller aircraft in the sub-500nm range, sub-50-seater market at present, like Heart Aviation’s 19-seater ES-19, Tecnam’s 11-seater P-Volt, Eviation’s 9-seater Alice or other options.
The exception is Wright Aviation’s A320-sized 800-mile (695nm) 186-seater Wright 1, which is in a partnership with easyJet and is planning entry into service in 2030. Wright in September announced [PDF] that it is beginning testing of its 2MW propulsive powertrain, a key milestone along its plans.
Wright excepted, this short-range niche is surprisingly large in terms of routes. Heart cites some 4% of aviation’s global emissions as coming from routes under 200km (108nm), and 9% under 400km (216nm) — and suggests that electric solutions for these routes can be available by the end of the 2020s. By 2050, it hopes to have electric aircraft for the 1300km (702nm) range barrier, which it suggests captures one third of global emissions.
Orders have come from United (100 aircraft), its partner Mesa (another 100), and Finnair (20) for the 19-seater Heart Aerospace ES-19. It’s essentially a replacement for the Beechcraft 1900, which has been out of production since 2002. It’s a category that very few airlines presently operate in, and which is at this point scattered among micro-airlines [PDF].
Heart plans to have the four-engined, high-winged ES-19 certified for commercial flight by 2026. The company says that “our first-generation aircraft will have a maximum range of up to 400 km (250 miles [216nm]), which will increase as battery energy densities improve.”
In terms of the technologies, Heart says that “our electric motor is about 20 times less expensive than a similarly-size turboprop, and about 100 times less expensive than the cheapest turbofan. More importantly, maintenance costs are more than 100 times lower. These lower operating costs will make 19-seater electric aircraft competitive to 70-seater turboprop aircraft.”
With crew efficiencies of the 19-seat niche — no flight attendant being needed for this size of aircraft — it seems a compelling argument.
Norway’s Widerøe, Tecnam and Rolls-Royce, meanwhile, are collaborating to have the electric P-Volt, based on the 11-seater Tecnam P2012 Traveller, in service by 2026 as well. Widerøe is aiming this at some forty-plus airports with sector lengths under 275km (148nm).
Fundamentally, at this point most of the orders for electric aircraft include clauses around the airframes being certified and performing as expected in commercial service. In many ways, that makes this first generation of aircraft something of a testbed — but an incredibly promising one.
One key question remains, though: how will they be charged? With decarbonisation of everything from the power sector to homes to factories to automobiles, ensuring that electric aircraft can be charged, and batteries potentially swapped out, with low- or zero-carbon electricity will be no easy feat.
Author: John Walton
Published: 11th November 2021
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