Can Electric Aircraft Revolutionize Aviation?

GLIMPSING THE FUTURE OF AVIATION WITH JOSHUA PORTLOCK

MEETING JOSHUA PORTLOCK

The person who made me think differently about electric aviation was an engineer by the name of Joshua Portlock. Years ago, pre-COVID, when I was preparing a keynote on the future of travel, this particular technology bugged me. I wasn’t confident I understood it very well and I had big lingering doubts about the battery/weight compromises. But there was this guy making noise about the subject, trying to get approvals to set up a commercial sightseeing service using an electric aircraft. He was in another city, but only a flight away. So what better way to learn than to go see him and take a closer look at his machine at the same time? He said yes. So I went. 

CHANGING THE GAME OF ELECTRIC AVIATION

First impression: that aircraft – a two-seater Pipistrel manufactured in Slovenia – was soooo elegant. Everything Joshua showed me was better than anticipated. Much better. Simple speed controller, a power percentage indicator on the instrument panel. Redundancy everywhere. A second battery behind the cockpit area. Multiple controllers and buses for moving electricity around. Gorgeous packaging. And the motor! Imagine a spinner, that pointy cone that extends back around the base of the propeller blades. Now extend another few inches and you have the motor. That’s it! No bigger than that! Aha, the batteries might be heavy, but we also save back some of that weight!

But what really impressed me were the economics. 

Try three bucks an hour to fly, or one-tenth the energy cost per hour compared to piston engined aircraft. Oh, and a similar fraction on the maintenance. Oh yeah. Just like Tesla owners have discovered, electric motors are MUCH more reliable and require MUCH less fettling than complex, hot, vibrating internal combustion engines. And aero engines, as anyone who owns a Cessna will tell you, happen to be HIDEOUSLY expensive to strip and rebuild. For Joshua the total dollars, inclusive of all aspects of flying and all aspects of aircraft maintenance, were down three-quarters. Um, what? A seventy-five percent reduction? THIS is the game-changer. THIS is what makes electric aircraft a definite and growing part of the future of commercial aviation. 

The Pipistrel: Electric Ultralight Aircraft

Then Joshua explained that the Pipistrel was essentially a conversion of a traditional airframe and the biggest thing HE had learned was that there was so much more to come, once we redesign aircraft from first principles. Ducted fans, for example (shrouds around propellers) greatly increase thrust efficiency but are a no-go for piston-engines because they are bulky and they vibrate and they leave less room for the blades. They will be a staple in electric-aero designs.

And this was before Harbour Air (running electro-converted DeHavilland Beaver float planes for passenger flights on the west coast of Canada and the US) reported maintenance costs more like one TWENTIETH piston-engined versions. And this was before Eviation launched the Alice aircraft. And this was before DHL pre-ordered a few of those … 

Range is, of course the limiter. We can forget Chicago to London. Boeing’s CTO told me we need a five-fold improvement in battery energy density before we can even think about electric long-haul. The roadmap for batteries remains incremental, so for long-haul, the future remains biofuels and hydrogen, and probably mostly the former because hydrogen powertrains work great but have their own complexity issues and packaging/volume disadvantages – but that’s another story. 

The Future of Commercial Air Travel

So, short range commercial it is. How short? Not that short. Eviation’s Alice, for example, claims a range of 1000 kms with nine passengers. With the FAA and every other responsible aviation authority requiring a generous chunk of that to be reserved for weather, diversions and other unforeseen events, let’s be conservative and call it 500-600 kms. Hmmm, 500-600 kms covers a LOT of commercial aviation.

Consider: the first airline that offers Washington DC to NYC (or Los Angeles to San Francisco, or London to Paris, take your pick) for HALF the ticket price AND offers a whisper-quiet, ultra-reliable ride AND promotes said ticket as zero emissions AND still, with all that, makes a bigger profit than its competitors. Anyone think they’ll have trouble filling seats? 

Electric aircraft are the real deal. Thank you, Mr Portlock, for helping me see it.

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