After all, powering a car down the road is different than powering an airplane through the air, and the electric automobile is still struggling to find its niche. Aviation experts say that ultra-green aviation technology will take a good deal of time. The necessary technical advances are still speculative. On the other hand, they add, aerospace engineers can see the path to eventual success, if not the actual stepping stones along the way.
Several years ago, when the auto industry faced government pressure to minimize its environmental footprint by reducing fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions, manufacturers turned first to hybrid-electric and then battery-electric power-trains that now move Chevy Volts and Nissan Leafs. Today, confronted with substantially the same environmental mandates, the aviation industry has begun gearing up to use those same green power plants to propel aircraft.
THE ELECTRIC CAR IS SO YESTERDAY; ELECTRIC AIRPLANES ARE COMING.
Electric propulsion will be a Game-changer and transform aeronautics in the next 20 to 30 years. Electric-powered unmanned aerial vehicles first transitioning from military to civilian use, followed in time by much more environmentally responsible commercial transport planes. The changeover to fully electric propulsion will be assisted by the adoption of hybrid-electric drive trains. Hybrids, which can implemented more easily, provide a way to compensate for the high masses of batteries and so afford a way to improve the power-to-mass ratio of the engine. The development of electric aircraft not only depends on the speed at which battery technology improves, but also how fast electrical equipment, the motors get better. Electric motors would need efficiencies of around 95 percent, and the most important of all is, after such tremendous improvement in the technology the system should be affordable and durable with maximum security and safety.
(In photo - Boeing's SUGAR Volt (Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research) twin-engine future concept airliner. The 737-size transport would be powered by hybrid propulsion system that would combine gas turbine and battery/electric motor technology )
Aeronautics was neither an industry nor a science. It was a miracle.
apple_newton
gt 2 knw much abt da electric airplanes....yeah technology needs 2 improve a lot n efficient techniques hav 2 b innovated....
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