Electric Planes, could it be a possible future of Airlines

Over the past few decades we have seen multiple industries transition from the old conventional source of energy to the renewable, and while we have seen huge strides in production of renewable energy, the technology required to allow every industry to use it has not kept pace. The biggest problem we face with this is the storage problem and the industry which seems to be on the farthest end of spectrum is the aviation industry. Boeing and Airbus are in a constant battle to build the most fuel efficient plane, allowing their customers to save on their ever increasing fuel costs and increase their bottom line, yet they are still using White petrol even when the energy available from the grid is cheaper. So what could be the reason behind, why isn't every industry transition form the traditional ways towards a cleaner future with renewables?

What could a future with electric plane look like? Rs.1000 tickets, quieter airports, or even shorter routs and runways; companies have been betting on electric powered planes for this cleaner future. But even though electric planes have been around since seventies, they haven't really taken off. So whats keeping them grounded? In 1880s the first trial on electric powered airship was done by two french army officers but they soon ran into problems when the battery just couldn't hold enough energy, this was just the beginning of the biggest problem which kept the designers on their toes no advancements were made in next hundred years. In late 1970s, after the invention of Ni-Cd batteries, the first electric powered flight(MB-E1) took off but it could only last 15 minutes. But in 1980s, John B. Goodenough invented Li-ion batteries, this revolutionized the power storage industry, and a few decades later, this was the reason which made it possible for Solar Impulse 2 to circle around the globe. Starting in 2015, the plane flew for 16 months and covering 42,000 km, except that it flew at a speed of 45-54 kmph, which is roughly the speed of a motorcycle traveling in a city. Solar Impulse is a part of the movement in recent years which was started to develop alternative energy, specially when people and government started to realize how bad flying was to the environment. The aviation industry alone emitted about a billion tonnes in CO2 emissions in 2019, which is around 2.5% of global emissions. It might not sound a lot but this is nearly equivalent to the entire CO2 emission of South America (1.2 Billion tonnes CO2 emission in 2019).

Electric planes have been on peoples minds for a while, but two major problems are not letting it take off. Firstly, the technology is not quite ready, The aviation industry has to overcome a massive hurdle before they can transition into the renewable future, the energy density of our storage methods. Energy density is the energy that can be harnessed from 1 Kg of source. For white Petrol (the fule airlines use) it is around 43 MJ/kg, currently our best Li-ion batteries come at around 1 MJ/kg, so battery energy is around 43 times heavier then the fuel. And the storage capacity of the batteries is around 250 Wh/kg and we need to get closer to 800Wh/kg to start flying and we need at least 12,000Wh/kg for a passenger plane to even take off. So if we want to add more power to a plane, we need to get a bigger battery, and to get that plane flying despite the weight, we need even a bigger battery then before and it would mean more weight and then even a much bigger battery, and the cycle continues.

And even if the engineers design a plane that overcomes the shortfalls of the battery technology, they have to take on the industries second hurdle, the approval from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Companies have to prove that every part of the airplane is safe to fly, passing a series of tests, one of which is making sure that the batteries do not catch fire. In America the FAA made an amendment to its rules in 2016 to allow up to 19 passengers plane's using electrical propulsion systems to fly. The real problem is that the certifications with these amendments takes years. To tackle this companies have got creative, they have started to retrofit old planes to get certified(they are taking out old fuel propulsion systems and retrofitting electrical systems in its place).

Retrofitting has happened in phases. The first phase was from a company called Pipistrel, it created the worlds first all electric 2 seater aeroplane back in 2007 by putting an electric engine in a glider. Today those planes are used for pilot training. The second phase, a Hybrid; Los Angeles company 'Ampaire', replaced one of the two engines of an old plane with an electric one. Ampaire hopes to get its electric plane the Ampaire hybrid-electric Eel certified for commercial use by 2021. And finally, over in Vancouver, electric motor manufacturer 'MagniX' and Vancouver based airline 'Harbour Air', flew a retrofitted 62 year old plane. A 15 min test flight in December 2019, made it the worlds first all electric commercial plane to fly. It proved that electric could actually take off. The two companies goal is now to electrify all of its Harbour Air fleet (more than 40 sea planes), and have it certified by end of 2021.

Retrofitting seems to be perfect, the problem though is that it limits you to the structure it is build for. So, lets say that the original motor is build for a 1000 kg and we remove it then we can put only a 1000 kg. Electric motors are lighter and smaller but their batteries are heavy, so we loose power because batteries for the same amount of power are far more heavier then fuel. Even though Harbour Air and MagniX found out a balance in their planes, their range took a hit(their electric planes can just go over 160 km). For electric planes to be a long term success, they will have to go farther. An Israili company called Eviation in working on a solution, instead of retrofitting an old plane, its engineers have build a plane from scratch. The 9 seater plane was built around the battery to reduce weight(In theory the plane can fly almost 400 km). As the plane was build from ground up, getting it certified is taking longer.

Each electric plane is different but they are going for a maximum range of 1000 km, and while it might not seem like an impressive distance, these short range electric planes can solve a lot of problems. In 2018, nearly half of the tickets sold globally were for flights travelling less than a 1000 km. But instead of designing smaller planes for these routes, we are often using big jumbo jets for travel(which are mainly build for flying 1000s of km), which are able to perform much better if they are to cruise over long distances. But, for a flight that lasts just an hour, these planes just go up and then they come down. In last few decades, flying commercial planes across small distances has become so expensive for airlines in Europe and Australia that they have stopped services to the regional airports. The regional Airports are running at a loss and even have gone bankrupt, but electric planes could be a fix and there is already an infrastructure for them.

As for near future, electric aviation can come in all sort of shapes and forms. Uber is already working on all electrical vertical takeoff and landing vehicle or Evtol, that could pick you up from your home and drop you at the nearest airport. Even big companies like Airbus and Rolls-Royce are betting on this, but we are still far away from a commercial plane which could be an alternative to the commercial planes running on fossil fuels. To achieve this we need to get out of this infinite loop of mass and energy, we would require much more efficient batteries for electric planes to really takeoff and be economical for the companies or maybe some other form of alternate source of fuel which is environment friendly.

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