Electric aircraft propulsion offers quiet operation but big challenges

Electrification is having profound impacts on the automotive industry. Electric aircraft may have a similar impact on the aerospace sector.

Attracted by the low weight and cost of electric motors compared with gas turbine jet engines, and particularly by their near-silent operation and potential for zero emissions, the civil aviation sector is showing increasing interest in using electricity to power future flight, at least over the relatively short distances that dominate city-to-city aviation.

While jets are unassailable as the prime movers for intercontinental long-haul airliners — nobody’s suggesting that electric aircraft could transport passengers from Europe to Asia, across the Atlantic or even between the East and West coasts of the US — the short-haul routes between both European and US cities, currently plied mostly by twin-engined single-aisle aircraft, are the targets for a new generation of radically different aircraft whose development is being fostered by the aerospace majors. These machines could take the sector into areas of science and technology very different from those it is used to.