Electric small airliner flying by motor aiming for flight until 2022 under development

Boeing venture capital "Horizon X"And American affiliate · JetBlue affiliated company"JetBlue Technology Ventures"Supported by startup"Zunum Aero"Updated its future business development plan and announced plans to fly short-range hybrid electric aircraft using electric motor by 2022.

Zunum Aero
http://zunum.aero/

These hybrid electric jets could change how we live and work by 2022 - The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/5/16429398/zunum-aero-hybrid-electric-jet-2022

Zunum Aero announced the 12-seater short-range passenger aircraft that carries a battery on the fuselage and fly with an electric motor. The company had announced an initial plan aiming for flight until 2020 so far, but this time it is announced that a more detailed plan will be set and the flight time will be renewed to 2022.


It is Zunum airplane flying by electricity, but plans to generate electric power necessary for flight by making a hybrid type that combines a power generation engine in addition to installing a battery inside the wing. In order to fly an aircraft, we need a power source with very high energy density, but the reason is that with the battery at the present time the capacity is not realized. However, taking into consideration the fact that full battery drive is realized by future technological innovation, Zunum is promoting the development of an aircraft capable of replacing a power train without having to repair a large-scale aircraft.


For that reason, we first adopted a design that places the electric motor driving the propeller and the jet engine for power generation in "series (series)". What this "series" means is that the details are almost unknown whether physically arranging the engine on the same axis or electrically in series, but the company is in the state of 15 to 20 years from now We will clarify the policy as we incorporate the basic design of the aircraft that can absorb technological innovation.


At Zunum, we are fully developing the aircraft as a "small aircraft", and we are aiming for aircraft development with a cruising distance of 700 miles (about 1100 km), and by 2030 a cruising distance of 1000 miles (about 1,600 km) And that. Zunum's fuselage concentrates on extremely short distances, whereas a turbo prop, which is widely used in regional routes, has a cruising distance of over 1000 km in general small jet aircraft, while this is a conventional Because it aims at efficiently covering the short range that the aircraft was not good at.

Especially in the case of jet aircraft, the "mile unit cost" to fly a certain distance tends to rise as the distance becomes shorter. According to Zunum, the cost per passenger on a 500-mile (about 800 km) flight is 1,000 miles, because the zone is at a high distance, speed and loading zone where the jet can fly most efficiently, There are cases that it is tripled compared with the flight of about 1600 km. It seems that Zunum is setting the aim to divide into a zone where small jet aircraft are not good by targeting a short distance / small number of routes demand in a zone lower than that.

According to Zunum's estimate, the operation cost of this aircraft is that the cost "1 seat mile" to skip one seat a mile will be $ 0.09 (about 10 yen) or $ 260 per hour of flight (about 30,000 yen) about. Although the maximum speed is as low as 360 mph (about 580 km / h), it is possible to cut 80% of exhaust gas and noise in addition to low cost, and furthermore the required running distance for takeoff is only 2200 feet ( About 670 meters), it is very short, so it will match low-rural airports of small size, making it possible to generate inexpensive ticket prices and high profitability.

In addition, it is possible to expect the effect of shortening the total traveling time more than before by connecting the local airports directly with point-to-point. It is an announcement that interest is likely to rise, whether electric aircraft which was not thought until now is really born and the day of starting services will come.