Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 19. April 25, 2025
- How good is the C929? Part 2. April 24, 2025
- Boeing First Quarter Results Update: China is 10% of the backlog, with 500 in “Unidentified” April 24, 2025
- Boeing First Quarter Results: Tariffs, Return flights, $10.55bn asset sale April 23, 2025
- RTX Q1 2025 Earnings: GTF Talk Takes A Back Seat To Tariffs April 22, 2025
Bjorn’s Corner: Why e in ePlane shall stand for environment, Part 17. High hanging fruit.
April 10, 2020, ©. Leeham News: We have since December 13, discussed why e in ePlane should not stand for electric and covered a lot of areas explaining why electric aircraft or hybrids are not the best way to environmentally friendly air transport.
We now recap what we learned and then wrap the series.
Figure 1. The Gartner hype cycle. Source: Wikipedia.
Bjorn’s Corner: Why e in ePlane shall stand for environment, Part 13. Serial Hybrid.
March 13, 2020, ©. Leeham News: In this week’s Corner, we address an often forgotten aspect of Electric and Electric-Hybrid aircraft design.
The battery as an energy source, as the only or assisting source, has the same weight during the whole flight. A fuel (alternate, fossil, or hydrogen) consumes during the flight. You gradually fly a lighter aircraft. Let’s see how this affects the aircraft’s efficiency.
Figure 1. Embraer’s E175-E2, a latest-generation 88 seater jet used for our example. Source: Embraer.
Bjorn’s Corner: Why e in ePlane shall stand for environment, Part 12. Battery risks.
March 6, 2020, ©. Leeham News: We use this week’s Corner to discuss the safety hazards a change to an Electric or Hybrid-Electric airliner introduces.
The trigger is two battery fires in six weeks for the electric aircraft prototypes which are now flooding the market.
Figure 1. Eviation’s Alice battery-driven prototype. Source: Eviation
Bjorn’s Corner: Why e in ePlane shall stand for environment, Part 11. More electric aircraft.
February 28, 2020, ©. Leeham News: We now look at technology developments that make sense, and can deliver real improvements in the near future.
We start in this Corner with what more electric aircraft and engines can bring.
Figure 1. Boeing’s 787, the first more electric airliner. Source: Boeing.
Bjorn’s Corner: Why e in ePlane shall stand for environment, Part 7. Efficiency of cars versus airliners.
January 31, 2020, ©. Leeham News: We now look at ways to increase the fuel efficiency of our airliner and by it, improve the CO2 situation for our environment.
Let’s start with understanding where we are with the efficiency of our present air transport system. To get a feel for where we are we will compare it to our road transport system.
Figure 1. A principal view of a two-spool airliner turbofan. Source: Wikipedia.
Bjorn’s Corner: Why e in ePlane shall stand for environment, Part 5. Distributed propulsion.
January 17, 2020, ©. Leeham News: We continue our series why e in ePlane shall stand for environment and not electric, where we now examine the gains with electric/hybrid distributed propulsion systems.
We started last week with the type of boundary layer ingesting aft fans shown in Figure 1. Now we continue with wing mounted distributed propulsors.
Figure 1. Boundary-Layer Ingestion aft fans, driven by electric motors. Source: JADC.
Bjorn’s Corner: Why e in ePlane shall stand for environment. Part 1. Hype versus reality.
December 13, 2019, ©. Leeham News: The first all-electric commercial aircraft, a Harbor Air DHC-2 Beaver, flew over the Fraser River near Vancouver in the week (Figure 1). It was powered by a magniX electric engine fed with energy from batteries.
Despite this progress, this Corner series is about why the e in our future ePlanes should stand for environment and not electric.
Figure 1. Harbour Air seaplane flying with a magniX electric engine feed by batteries. Source: magniX.
The new focus in aircraft development, the production
By Bjorn Fehrm
October 17, 2019, ©. Leeham News: Over the last decades the focus for new airliner projects has been technological advancements in aerodynamics, structures, engines, and avionics. This has offered 15% efficiency gains for the new airliners over the aircraft they replace. While still important, the next airliner projects have an additional focus which has moved to the top of the list. The production phase and how to improve its many parts.
The parts include development for automation, efficient partnering/sourcing and how to reduce the expensive learning phase of the production. We will cover this change in a series of articles around the 9th Aviation Forum, an up-and-coming Munich conference that focuses on these themes.
Airbus CEO says the airline industry must cut carbon emission with 50% by 2050
By Bjorn Fehrm
June 18, 2019, ©. Leeham News: Airbus new management team has set the company ambitious targets for the future. These not only describe how to develop and produce new, more competitive airliners but also defines Airbus’ contribution to a sustainable aviation industry, contributing its part in the fight against climate change.
The new Airbus CEO, Guillaume Faury said at the opening of the Paris Air show “We must find a way to decarbonized aviation. This is for our generation to do. It’s expected of us by the flying public and by society”.
Bjorn’s Corner: Why hybrid cars work and hybrid airliners have challenges
By Bjorn Fehrm
June 14, 2019, ©. Leeham News: In last week’s Corner we discussed why aircraft with batteries as an energy source will be short ranged for decades to come. The battery energy density is too low and it won’t change appreciably over time.
Now we look at the challenges hybrid transport aircraft face when competing with today’s turbofan airliners.
The Zunum Hybrid electric airliner. Source; Zunum.