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The idea of personal planes may conjure up dark visions of Blade Runner, but the first batch of two-seater aircraft to fly on electricity rather than fossil fuels could reach more than a dozen buyers by year's end. And if some fans of experimental air travel have their way, that's a step closer to a gridlock-free future when relatively ordinary folks will hop to work in small, carbon-neutral planes.
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A cozy crowd of several dozen engineers, venture capitalists, and members of clean-tech companies plotted the potential at the Electric Aircraft Symposium held Saturday in San Francisco, sponsored by Foundation Capital and held by the CAFE Foundation, a non-profit aiming to advance personal air travel. CAFE stands for Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency.
The meeting included Ivo Boscarol, CEO of Pipistrel, which by the end of this year is set to deliver the first commercially produced, two-passenger electric aircraft to customers. The Slovenian company's Taurus Electro can climb to 6,000 feet after taking off on a 30-kilowatt motor. Recharging the glider's lithium-polymer battery is meant to take about as long as powering a mobile phone. Powered by electricity sourced from renewables, the plane could theoretically be carbon neutral to run. Depending upon the weather and skills of the pilot, the glider can travel 1,000 miles in a day.
"I'm sure that electric power everywhere will be the substitute for internal combustion fuel engines," Boscarol said. "First, you must develop aircraft that needs so little power that electricity is efficient." The glider weighs little more than 318kg and costs $133,000 (£67,013), only about one-third more than the electric Tesla Roadster, a hot toy for billionaires.
Pipistrel's customers include Formula One driver Pedro de la Rosa. But even Google co-founder Larry Page, who attended the forum, might have to wait to purchase the electric Taurus if he were interested. It is in the final stages of test flights and will be manufactured in a limited run this year. And in the US, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would prevent people from flying the glider under the same rules as light sport aircraft.
Sustainable air travel
Aircraft emissions, including carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and methane account for up to three per cent of the world's greenhouse gas pollution, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Although the bulk of that comes from hulking commercial jets, light aircraft continue to use leaded fuel.
Making air travel more sustainable will be tricky in the US, where the number of aerospace engineering graduates has plummeted by 57 per cent since 1990, said Brien Seeley, CAFE Foundation president. By contrast, support for light aircraft development is strong in the European Union, which contributed about 20 per cent of the $2.3 million (£1.2 million) that Pipistrel spent creating the Taurus Electro, according to Boscarol.
But this year's NASA Personal Air Vehicle Centennial Challenge contest will include its first Green Prize of $50,000 (£25,000) for a craft that achieves at least 100 miles per hour and the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon. Renamed the General Aviation Technology Challenge, the contest will dole out a total of $300,000 (£150,000).
Supporters of such competitions hope they can convince people that air travel could become the greenest form of transportation. "It will change society, the way we work, the way we live, the way cities grow," said Richard Jones, a technical fellow at Boeing Phantom Works. The research group is designing a plane-car hybrid to travel up to 300 miles at a time. Jones believes that by 2030, precision navigation systems could make it easier to pilot a compact plane than to drive a car. "People will probably be reading a newspaper rather than flying the vehicles," he said.
The trick is equipping aircraft with a brain as smart as a seagull's, said NASA aerospace engineer Mark Moore, who headed NASA's now-shuttered personal aircraft research group. And responsive tactile controls, such as steering mechanisms that resist a hand's wrong move, can prevent human error.
Coming closer to that goal is the Garmin G1000 Synthetic Vision System. Released earlier this month, it enables pilots to view topographic details even in foggy conditions within a Google Earth-like interface.
CAFE Foundation's Seeley displayed a mock-up interface that would draw a virtual pathway in the sky to keep a pilot on track. "This is how we're gonna get eventually to Hertz Rent-A-Plane," he said.
Pipistrel's electric plane in pictures
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