This All-Electric Aircraft Was Designed Specifically For Small Regional Flights
Image via Wright Electric
Moving the aviation industry towards entirely electric power sources is understandably tricky. Electric planes are still quite a fresh concept.
But, like many other things, it’s more feasible to begin with small steps—maybe it’s difficult to sustain multiple transatlantic flights all at once, but shorter, less intimidating flights might just do the trick.
Wright Electric, an electric aircraft startup, announced on Monday an innovation that aims to do that. The Wright Spirit, joining its previous Wright 1 in the company’s lineup, aims to provide one-hour flights for 100 passengers at a time.
This particular aircraft has its designed based on the Bae 146 platform, which is known for being a relatively silent affair.
The company’s proprietary Wright Motor is designed for “high performance altitude and ground-based applications,” and provides 10 kW/kg specific power. This, the company details, is “a 2x improvement compared to available aircraft propulsion motors.”
Apart from being scalable from 500 kW to 4MW, it’s also capable of producing highly reduced emissions and can reduce the overall weight of the system thanks to its lightweight design. This means that more room for payload is freed up, too.
Although it’s planned to be equipped with four “megawatt-class” motors at its final stage, the testing will first see it at a 1:3 ratio of electric to conventional engines, before a transition to two of each, and finally a fully electric aircraft by the time 2026 rolls around.
Image via Wright Electric
This process, called the JTAP (Joint Technical Assessment Phase), will include team members from well-known names in the zero-emissions space such as Honeywell and EaglePicher.
Some potential one-hour routes are popularly traversed ones, such as London to Paris and New York to Washington.
[via InsideEVs, images via Wright Electric]
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