Airborne Electric Vehicles: A New Era of Clean, Quiet, and Efficient Aviation

Airborne electric vehicles (EVs) are advancing rapidly, bringing us closer to a cleaner, quieter, and more efficient era of aviation.

Airborne electric vehicles are gaining momentum as a sustainable solution for air transportation. Here's an overview of their advancements and the companies involved:

1. Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft are a prime example of airborne EVs, designed for applications ranging from delivery drones to urban air taxis. These aircraft are garnering attention for their potential to revolutionize short-distance air travel.

2. The Middle East is emerging as a hub for e-VTOL operations, with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia at the forefront. Companies like Joby and Archer Aviation are securing deals to launch air taxi services in the region.

3. Chinese manufacturer EHang has already conducted a passenger-carrying demo flight of its pilotless e-VTOL aircraft in Abu Dhabi earlier this year.

4. According to McKinsey experts, by 2030, leading companies in the passenger AAM industry may offer many more daily flights, which will be shorter and with fewer passengers on board, than the world's largest airlines.

5. Against this backdrop, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued final rules last week for operating air taxis. The FAA said that air taxis belong to Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) flyers. They are highly automated, powered by electricity, and have vertical take-off and landing abilities, explained the agency.

6. Also considered ‘power-lift' vehicles, they have the elements of both airplanes and helicopters, said the FAA. While they will begin by using existing travel paths and landing structures currently being used by helicopters, the new rules will allow pilots to train with a single set of flight controls.

7. Powered-lift aircraft, FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said, are “the first new category of aircraft in nearly 80 years,” and the new rules will open the door to supporting their widespread AAM operations in the US.

8. To advance this sector, last month, the FAA gave a $3.34mln grant to Wright Electric along with its partners, including NASA, DOE, and DOD, under its Fueling Aviation's Sustainable Transition (FAST) program. Through this grant, the FAA aims to develop a new class of batteries for large electric aircraft that can accommodate 100+ passengers, which accounts for over 90% of the aerospace industry's carbon emissions.

9. Companies are now working on finding ways to make passenger airplanes operate entirely on electric power. The E9X is a newly designed electric aircraft, the design of which was conceptualized by the aviation startup Elysian and the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The aircraft can hold more passengers (90) and fly farther (up to 500 miles) on a single charge than previously thought possible.

10. These estimates are based on a theoretical battery pack of 360 watt-hours per kilogram. In contrast, Tesla (TSLA +0.72%) batteries have a density of between 272 and 296 Wh/kg.

11. The weight of the electric battery, according to Jayant Mukhopadhaya, a senior researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), is the main constraint of these planes as conventional commercial batteries store about 50x less energy per pound than jet fuel. As a result, in order to power an aircraft as big as the Boeing 737, we would need about 35-ton batteries.

12. “High density battery technology is one of the challenges at this moment, because scaling up production and further improving density remain crucial for widespread adoption.”

– Simay Akar, a senior member at IEEE

13. While the battery is the primary concern, the design is also critical. As such, the wings of the E9X aircraft are extremely large relative to the plane's body, which increases its aerodynamic efficiency.

“You shouldn't assume that an electric plane is going to look like the (most successful) planes of today.”

– Reynard de Vries, director of design and engineering at Elysian

14. Also, the batteries will not be placed in the fuselage but rather in the wings because they represent a large chunk of the plane's weight, and weight must be put “where the lift is being generated.”

The E9X, however, is just a concept for now and won't take flight until at least 2033. However, there are already other electric passenger aircraft, such as Aviation Alice, whose prototype was tested years ago, late in 2022, while having a target date of 2027 for full production. Eviation Alice, however, is designed to carry only nine passengers and two crew while having a range of about 250 nautical miles.

15. So, there are clear limitations to electric planes; however, their ability to significantly reduce their carbon footprint from flying is too big to ignore