The electric plane revolution is finally here, and it promises to shake up the $840 billion airline industry
- Large segments of the $840 billion airline industry are ripe for electrification, according to an analyst at the research firm Lux Research.
- Small, fixed-wing planes that carry 1 to 19 passengers will be the first to electrify. Those include private jets.
- It will be much harder to bring futuristic-looking air taxis to market because they rely on new aircraft designs and technologies.
- Norway announced in 2018 that it plans to electrify all domestic flights by 2040, and in the US the FFA already certifies some electric planes.
- Click here for more BI Prime stories.
Right now, few people are getting on planes, let alone ones powered by batteries.
But electric aircraft are coming - and they'll be here sooner than you think.
"We expect to see that market really start to take off this year," Chloe Holzinger, an analyst at the research firm Lux Research, told Business Insider. (She apologized for the pun.)
Holzinger tracks the battery industry and predicts that demand from the aviation sector is among the most powerful forces fueling the emerging $550 billion market for energy storage.
That's a good thing, too - not just because a quiet flight, free of the scent of jet fuel sounds delightful, but because the aviation industry is a big polluter.
The industry, which generated nearly $840 billion in revenue last year, currently contributes up to 3% of global carbon dioxide emissions. And those emissions are expected to triple by 2050.
Meanwhile, airlines like Delta and JetBlue are pledging to slash their emissions in the coming years.
Small planes will electrify 'much more aggressively'
The first aircraft to go all-electric will be small, fix-winged planes, Holzinger said. Those include things like puddle jumpers, crop dusters, and planes used in flight schools - basically, winged aircraft that hold up to 19 people.
"I get most excited about small, fix-winged aircraft," she said. "We expect those to electrify much more aggressively."
Using today's lithium-ion batteries - commonly found in electric cars and personal electronics, such as laptops - engineers can retrofit winged aircraft to make them electric, without relying on any new technologies.
"It's pretty simple," she said. You just have to swap out the engine for one that runs on batteries and replace the powertrain.
Click here to subscribe to Power Line, Business Insider's weekly clean-energy newsletter.
"All of these different types of small, fixed-wing aircraft are really ripe for electrification using today's lithium-ion batteries," she said.
And while the planes are small, the market isn't. Using Li-ion batteries available today, small airplanes could travel up to 550 kilometers (340 miles) on one charge - about the distance from San Francisco to LA.
"Many of the most-often-flown routes are under 550 kilometers," she said. "The most frequent flight route in the world is between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, and that's a distance of about 300 kilometers."
"A wide variety of different routes, globally, would benefit from using these types of electric planes."
Futuristic-looking air taxis remain stuck in the future
What about those neat-looking electric air taxis?
Several large companies including Uber and Boeing are pursuing electric flight technologies that fall within the category of "vertical take-off and landing," or VTOL. They're like oversized drones built to carry people.
But while the VTOL industry has attracted more than $30 billion in investment, per PitchBook, Holzinger says she's "bearish" on these technologies.
Unlike small winged aircraft, VTOLs rely on new designs, and perhaps even new battery chemistries.
"They're looking to make an entirely new transportation segment," she said. "This doesn't exist today."
Another downside, she said, is that these aircrafts will require strong and reliable 5G networks because VTOLs need to be autonomous to be profitable. And 5G itself is still a developing technology.
Large commercial flights may never be all-electric
VTOLs will eventually hit the market, but the same can't be said for large commercial planes, Holzinger said, like what you might take to fly from New York to LA.
"I don't think batteries will ever get to the point of being able to power a commercial flight alone," she said. "That battery size would be literally tons."
The added weight would quickly cut into revenue, she said. Even if the plane could lift off the ground, the airline would have to limit the amount of cargo it could transport.
An entire country committed to electric flight
For signs that aviation is electrifying, look to Norway. In January of 2018, the country - a trailblazer in transportation, with one of the world's largest fleets of electric cars - said it plans to make all short-haul flights electric by 2040.
"We think that all flights lasting up to 1.5 hours can be flown by aircraft that are entirely electric," Dag Falk-Petersen, the CEO of Avinor, a state-owned company that operates Norwegian airports, told Agence-France Presse (AFP) back in 2018.
That includes all domestic flights, he added.
The US is also making headway. Holzinger said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) allows for the certification of some electric versions of winged planes - meaning, the agency deems them safe to fly.
And there are a handful of startups working on these technologies today, from Zunum Aero, based in Washington and valued at $200 million, per PitchBook, to Bye Aerospace, located in Colorado, which was the first e-plane used in training to apply for FFA certification, according to the Denver Post.
"I'm expecting Norway will be a leader in this front," Holzinger said. "But I do expect these types of aircraft to be in broader use around the world by 2040."