Why haven't electric planes taken off yet? Electric aircraft explained

this episode is brought to you by brilliant click the link in the description below with tesla helping to popularize electric vehicles i'm sure you've noticed more and more electric cars flooding our streets but when it comes to electrifying transportation one thing that we haven't seen much of yet is electric aviation there's a lot of talk out there about whether or not electric planes have a viable future compared to electric cars and trucks they're often represented as the future of air travel in an industry that carried over 4.4 billion passengers in a year now real feasible electric planes could make a huge difference in combating the rising carbon emissions related to the aviation industry but why haven't we seen electric planes take off yet are there any designs waiting in the wings and is electric aviation really the savior it claims to be i'm matt farrell welcome to undecided [Music] we often hear about the impact that the transportation industry is having on the climate in particular aviation now while commercial and industrial aviation only accounts for about two percent of global carbon emissions the number of people flying each year is increasing and fast some estimations predict that aviation will account for 25 of the global carbon budget by 2050. in the united states domestic air travel is responsible for about nine percent of total us carbon emissions and flights departing from u.s airports are responsible for about 25 percent of passenger related air travel emissions worldwide i don't know about you but that's an alarming number to me and one solution that's gaining popularity is the potential use of electric powered aircrafts to reduce that impact but let's backtrack for a minute and take a look at the history of electric flight and believe it or not the idea and application of electric flight goes back as far as the 1880s when a few guys in the french army experimented by adding massive batteries and an 8 horsepower electric motor onto a balloon type of aircraft for the first time but things went quiet on the electric front for almost 100 years it wasn't until the 1970s that the united states department of defense started showing a bit of interest in trying to come up with some functional designs for electric flight in fact the program ended up being responsible for the first fully electric flight across the english channel which was about 170 kilometers since the 1970s there's been an on and off interest in electric airplanes culminating in a few recent notable examples projects like the solar impulse 2 which started around 2009 and was the world's first electric airplane to circumnavigate the planet between 2015 and 2016. and even more recently the magna x electric cessna flight has brought back the limelight to electric aviation now while we haven't gotten to the point where electric planes are quite common sight there are actually quite a few companies working on different designs for small electric planes some are a little more outlandish than others but there are a few pretty cool ideas out there some smaller airlines are even getting involved in the development process like wright electric's partnership with easyjet on their proposed 186-seat electric regional airliner or sas's investment in airbus there are also designs being developed without the support of airlines like magna x's e-cessna and aviation's alice and that brings me to my next point why haven't we seen electric planes being rolled out on a commercial scale well it's complicated but basically it comes down to three things the regulations the cost and the technology and not surprisingly they all sort of go hand in hand in hand when it comes to the regulations the faa and other regulatory agencies around the world have very tight regulatory processes and for good reason if something goes wrong with your car you can pull over but if something goes wrong with a plane well it's a lot more complicated if something goes wrong you can't stop you can't pull to the side of the road there's only one place for that airplane to go and so the regulatory stringency is much higher the requirements for reliability redundancy and safety are much higher for good reason you have no alternate so the regulatory strategy is adding time and complexity to developing electric airplanes but there's also the general gamble of trying to develop new technologies that may not pay off when it comes to cost electric planes are a relatively unexplored frontier meaning that oftentimes projects require significant upfront funding in order to be able to make any kind of meaningful progress and like any scientific research it doesn't always lead to the desired outcome take the zunum aero electric jetliner project for example after getting 1.3 million in funding from the private sector from companies like boeing jetblue and a grant from the state of washington the company reached a standstill in the research and ended up having to basically put the project on indefinite hold so developing an electric plane is a risky business in these early days but once the technology is figured out the cost of building an electric plane is generally on par with building a fuel-based plane in theory electric flight would be drastically cheap to operate which is another reason why a lot of people are pushing it for as a solution to the growing demand for airline services and despite the challenges there's been some progress with the technology the electric plane that has shown potential for commercial use and successfully flown a test flight is magna x's e-cessna in 2019 but it's small and only flew a short distance now while it's an exciting step in the right direction it highlights a stark truth electric flight is still in the development stages currently there's only one electric plane that's slated to be rolled out in the next few years and that's aviation's atlas which has a proposed range of about 1 000 kilometers or 621 miles and that's considered pretty significant but what this shows is that electric flight is nowhere near being able to handle commercial trans-ocean flight paths given all these hurdles what exactly can electric flight even do for us well let me put it this way you're probably not going to be taking that european vacation on a fully electric flight over the ocean but if you're heading a few states away to visit grandma electric flight actually looks like it might have a bright future in fact for a plane like the magna x cessna caravan it would cost about 400 in conventional fuel for a 100 mile flight but that same flight in their electric powered cessna would run about six dollars worth of electricity as the chief executive of magna x roy ganzarski said we're not an environmentalist company the reason we're doing this is because it makes business sense like i said before regional air travel is responsible for a significant load of carbon emissions and other gases and electric planes at least in theory seem like they'll be able to handle the rigors of regional travel and if you've watched some of my other videos you've heard a lot about the different applications of lithium-ion batteries and what they can provide us for moving towards a more electric reliable society but one of the main issues with lithium-ion batteries is that well they're pretty heavy for their output in order for an electric motor to be able to power something like the world's largest aircraft the airbus a380 it would need to carry batteries weighing 30 times as much as the equivalent fuel load now that just doesn't add up in fact the plane would never even get off the ground the main reason that fully electric planes seem like they'll be limited to smaller ranges is because of the energy density or specific energy of different fuel types for example the energy density of currently available lithium-ion batteries is about 250 watt hours per kilogram while conventional kerosene based fuel is closer to 12 000 watt hours per kilogram that's a big difference and in order for a fully electric version of common planes like the boeing 737 or the airbus 320 to compete on longer routes up to 700 miles they need to carry batteries that have specific energies of at least 800 watt hours per kilogram that might not sound like a big difference but getting battery's specific energy from 250 watt hours per kilogram to 800 watt hours per kilogram requires a whole lot of innovation in an industry like this innovation usually requires a lot of money even to power a smaller aircraft like something that had a 30 to 50 person occupancy we need batteries that were able to reach energy densities of 500 watt hours per kilogram and we're just not there yet there's a general agreement among innovators in the electric plane realm that commercial electric flight is still a ways off it's kind of one of those eternal 10 years away technologies but the difference here is that there's a whole lot of ways to incorporate partially electric planes into the game right now unlike say thorium-based nuclear reactors which either work or they don't but regardless of these hurdles there are some reasons to be optimistic that we're on the cusp of seeing electric flight take off yeah i said it in fact there are some very cool designs and projects that are supporting smaller vehicles like nasa's x-57 maxwell which focuses on very short travel and cutting-edge design that incorporates 14 different motors into the plane's wings and uber's plans to roll out electric powered veto taxis actually it's worth a quick and dirty explanation of what vtol is because we're likely to see it permeating our transportation pretty soon vtol stands for vertical takeoff and landing and is descriptive of any aircraft which can take off hover and land in a vertical formation a common example would be the helicopter but the tech is being extended to smaller and more efficient designs and it's likely to compete with traditional road vehicles most vtol technologies are being designed for metropolitan or local use however the f-35 fighter jet is a hybrid being tagged as a stovl or stovall which is short take-off and vertical landing companies like uber are toying with the idea of implementing veto aircrafts into cities and there's cause for excitement and concern and while it's pretty cool and maybe a bit scary to imagine flying cars weaving through our cities there's also a lot of logistical issues with it including if the vitol aircrafts are fully electric where will we charge them uber had planned a soft 2020 rollout for some vital tech in dubai and dallas fort worth but that looks obviously delayed since this year has been wild already either way vetol certainly has a future in electric flight but it will change the way we think about what flight really is so i've talked a lot about the process of getting to where we are now with electric flight but what's next according to the air transportation action group or atag around 80 of total carbon emissions from aviation come from flights longer than 1500 kilometers and that unfortunately means it rules out any near-future electric-powered airplanes but atag also does show that some experimental fuels based on algae and waste byproducts can emit up to 80 percent less co2 so many aviation experts are touting that the next gen aircrafts will be electric hybrids and that could be a good stepping stone for companies to test some new electric designs while having to satisfy less regulatory steps in fact there's already been a lot of work being done around a large scale about 100-seat hybrid electric plane airbus has plans to roll out hybrid electric aircraft by the 2030s and that's basically the soonest and most realistic plan yet it's no secret that the future of transportation has to be more efficient and limiting carbon emissions should be a priority with the impact the aviation sector has on the carbon budget we're likely to see more and more companies buying into at least some version of electric-based flight even if it is only hybrid and being done primarily to save money with climate change being a front and center topic i'm excited to see what the future holds and if we're really able to get lithium-ion batteries to the next level that's needed for electric flight to soar and if you'd like to learn more about batteries electricity and the science behind things like electric motors you should check out the electricity and magnetism course at brilliant the key to my tesla model 3 is the giant lithium-ion battery pack and the electric motors that make it move it all goes back to faraday's electric motor from the early 1800s and this course walks you through all of it and even if learning about magnetism doesn't catch your fancy there are other courses like computer science fundamentals where you can learn about some of the principles behind algorithms and programming everyday tasks there's over 60 courses including topics in mathematics statistics and computer science the thing about brilliant that's resonated with me the most is how they teach the concepts i've never done well memorizing formulas but learn by doing brilliant teaches the why of something through interactive challenges not just the how so i'm able to apply that understanding in my own way go to brilliant.org undecided to sign up for free the first 200 people will get 20 off their annual premium membership thanks to brilliant and to all of you for supporting the channel now jump into the comments and let me know what you think about electric flight are you looking forward to a vitol future and as always a special thank you to all of my patrons and a big welcome to new producer paul meyer if you like this video check out one of the ones i have linked to right here and be sure to subscribe if you think i've earned it as always thanks so much for watching i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Undecided with Matt Ferrell

Views: 65,995

Keywords: electric plane, electric plane engine, electric plane flight, electric, plane, electric aircraft, electric aircraft 2020, electric planes, electric planes 2020, electric planes elon musk, airplane, airplanes, batteries, biofuel, eviation alice, flying, hybrid airplane, innovation, jet fuel, stock market, sustainability, technology, undecided with matt farrell, undecided matt farrell, matt ferrell

Id: A5yuBp3_9Rw

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020