The weight of the airplane is also a major issue for aircraft manufacturers. This prevents a situation where individual cells store less and less energy due to aging. Infineon helps to face this challenge – for instance with active “battery balancing”, which increases the capacity and life of batteries by more than ten percent: a smart battery management system continuously controls the functions and charge of all battery cells and improves their utilization. Therefore, the battery units must not only become smaller, they must also have a higher power density. This would allow longer distances to be flown. In other words, for electric airplanes to have serious commercial possibilities, battery capacity must increase considerably. But that is not enough, for example, to power long-haul aircraft. Since the start of the 1990s, the energy density of batteries and the efficiency of electric motors have more than doubled. One of the major challenges for developers of electric aircraft is the construction of more efficient and lighter batteries. Only the hybrid aircraft from Rolls Royce is faster and flies further: the as yet unnamed VTOL machine flies at speeds of about 400 km/h and can cover an amazing 800 kilometers. The models reach speeds between 130 and 320 km/h. There are enormous differences with regard to the distances that the planned electric air taxis can fly: they are able to fly between 16 and 300 kilometers – which should be enough for city traffic. The five-seater could be ready for serial production as early as 2025. UK car maker Rolls-Royce is developing a hybrid electric drone: a gas turbine will generate the electricity. China is already electrifying large numbers of automobiles – so it is not really surprising that the country is also producing an electric air taxi: the four by four meter “Ehang 184” has room for one passenger. There is room for two passengers in the carbon capsule.
“Jet” from the startup Lilium Aviation based near Munich, Germany, is also intended as an air taxi. Other companies are also building air taxis: CityAirbus is working on an air taxi for four passengers and Uber plans to launch its air taxi service “Uber Air” in US cities and operate the corresponding landing areas by 2023. The electric air taxi “Volocopter 2X” carried out an unmanned test flight in 2017, flying over the emirate at a height of 60 meters. The authorities will then have to impose regulations about minimum distances to prevent collisions.ĭubai plans to use passenger drones as taxis in the near future – and to do this the authorities are working together with the German startup Volocopter.
Another issue is that many electric air taxis will fly autonomously. But if there were too many drones in cities, we would need additional regulations to guarantee safety – such as on traffic routes and landing sites. It is not only the technology that is a challenge, the flying objects themselves are an issue: large-scale individual air traffic will be possible only with electric drones and air taxis. It will take longer before we see long-haul electric planes. This could be followed by regional flights of up to 1,200 kilometers. By 2025, they could take off from small landing sites, as they rise into the air vertically. Initially, electric drives will be used for multicopters that transport goods or passengers in cities. Many decades will pass before all flights are powered by electricity. Airbus CEO Tom Enders described electric flight as one of the “greatest industrial challenges of our time”. However, from a technical aspect, the evolution in aviation is not easy to implement. At present, takeoff and landing are particularly responsible for enormous noise pollution. By 2050, the noise emitted from airplanes is also due to fall by 60 percent. In other words: an airline that emits less than it is permitted to can sell the right to produce more emissions to another airline. In the near future, emissions will also become expensive for airlines: the members of the IACO have agreed to compensate for their CO 2 emissions and buy emission units.
The emissions not only have an impact on the environment, they also have an adverse effect on our health.īut the aviation industry has set itself ambitious targets: by 2050, CO 2 emissions should be reduced by approximately 75 percent. They also produce nitric oxide, water vapor, and fine particulates. However, CO 2 is not the only substance that aircraft emit. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has calculated that by 2040 this share could rise by a factor of four due to the increased number of flights. Until now, aviation has been responsible for about 2.4 percent of all CO2 emissions worldwide.
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