I spent the first four months of my infancy in 1950 in a house adjoining the London Terminal Airport, then in Croydon, Surrey, and must have been awakened many a time by the noise of airliners taking off and landing overhead. My godfather worked for the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation. As a schoolboy, I built model aircraft powered by wound-up or stretched-out rubber bands, except for the toy my dad gave me one day: a tethered “Electronic Falcon Plane that flies itself,” made by Remco Industries, Inc. Its power came from a battery enclosed in a pocket flashlight device. Like a flashlight, you switched it on, the prop turned, and the plane went round and round in circles, until you became bored! From then on, like everybody else, I have traveled the world in avgas-fueled aircraft, piston or jet. I use the reading lamp above, watch the screen on the back of the seat in front of me, watch the wing flaps move and hear the undercarriage retract—knowing they are electric or electro-hydraulic.
A definition is perhaps necessary. An electric aircraft is a vehicle which, with or without a pilot or passenger(s), is regularly capable of taking off from the ground, rising to a height of no less than 100 feet and no more than 80,000 feet, and then flying for between 4 minutes and 4 years, using electric or hybrid-electric propulsion. This definition covers everything from a fingertip drone to an airship; this also makes provision for a roadworthy vehicle or flying car.
Avgas airplanes dumped 700 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air in 2013, according to a 2015 report from National Geographic. The aircraft industry is expecting a sevenfold increase in air traffic by 2050, and a fourfold increase in greenhouse gas emissions unless fundamental changes are made. The crucial next step towards ensuring the aircraft industry becomes greener is the full electrification of commercial aircraft. This means zero CO2 and NOx emissions, with energy sourced from power stations that are themselves sustainably fueled; a step-change in fuel efficiency is crucial to maintain emission levels promised in the Paris Agreement—a 30 percent improvement in aircraft efficiencies is required by 2035. As this book is published, the world of aviation is bravely accelerating into a new, more silent and less polluting era of electric propulsion. Described as the “Third Revolution” in aviation (after heavier-than-air flight and jet engines), the introduction of hybrid-electric aircraft could be a massive breakthrough for sustainable aviation.
From the stratosphere to door-to-door, differing prototypes have now entered into their series-production phase, be they airships, or airplanes carrying up to eight passengers or training would-be pilots, be they vertical takeoff drones which can carry a single passenger across a city, or those for delivery, filmmaking or sport, or merely toys which can be hand-launched and piloted using virtual reality.
Remarkably, an approach to electrical power can be traced back to over 120 years ago, when our ancestors dreamed of this very era. But they were only held back by their then limited technology. This book tells how their dream is now becoming our reality.
Electrical airplanes are sure to change the look of aviation, but if humans plan to continue to fly in the future, we will have to embrace this new era of flight. According to some reports, the world contains only enough petroleum resources to last us through the year 2100. And as we get closer to that date, fuel prices are likely to rise higher and higher. Eventually, we will need to wean ourselves off internal combustion engines and the aircraft that use them. To do that, we’ll need to see innovation in aircraft design, battery technology, solar cells and electrically powered engines themselves.
During the period I have been researching this book, international research and development of electric aircraft have been making giant strides: a solar airplane has circumnavigated the planet, electric aircraft have crossed the English Channel, electric airships and helicopters are being tested, electric drones are everywhere, and the major aircraft manufacturers are working on hybrid-electric passenger craft for the future. But the origins, going back more than 120 years, are just as fascinating.
In presenting this book, I am reminded of two classics published over a hundred years ago, both by French aviation pioneers. Octave Chanute’s 308-page tome Progress in Flying Machines was published in 1894 by the Courier Corporation, while Joseph LeCornu’s La Navigation Aérienne Histoire documentaire et anecdotique was published by Vuibert and Nony in 1903. Although these authors presented up-to-date detailed accounts of aviation, neither was able to record the exponential progress which would take place in the three decades which followed. Where electric airplanes are concerned, with the cut-off point of this book as of spring 2018, it will be the same for me, unless I live to one hundred years old—and why not!