Manned Electric Aircraft: Smart City and Regional 2021-2041

This report is the first to forecast electric aircraft for 20 years ahead, while reflecting the realities of how the huge new $30 billion market that is identified will be structured. Primarily, it covers aircraft up to 100 passengers and equivalent freighters, touching on how electrification of larger aircraft converges with these to 2050. For example, 2041 will see about half of the zero-emission aircraft market value being in fixed-wing conventional takeoff and landing eCTOL and half in eVTOL but both involving General Aviation and Commercial applications. At the heavier end, fuel cell and hybrid powertrains have a place and that is reflected in the coverage of the report.

 

About one third of the report is dedicated to the technology and two thirds to the projects and aircraft. Because they are key 2021-2041, particular attention is given to batteries, motors, solar and VTOL aerodynamics in the technology sections. However, you can also learn powertrains including voltage trends benchmarked against minigrids and cars. The approach is to reveal commercial opportunities and benefits to society including the new smart cities. The opportunities include those for materials, devices and systems. It is not academic. It is not historical beyond data to compare with forecasts.

 

Uniquely the report has creative ideas and criticism based on the IDTechEx PhD level, multilingual analysts worldwide and over 20 years of studying the subject and visiting the researchers, including having the proponents speak at IDTechEx events. Indeed, only IDTechEx can put it all in the context of what is happening and about to happen in relevant aspects like electric boats and land vehicles, printed and flexible electronics and battery chemistry generally.

 

Only IDTechEx has drill down reports on all these aspects including one specifically on eVTOL aircraft. We reveal how premature deployment of one technology will probably result in a serious accident and how the phasing of commercial success with the various airframes and powertrains will be very different over the coming twenty years. We find that the balance of investment does not reflect the relative market opportunities and it is not fully acknowledged how some options are far safer than others for a variety of reasons. Benchmarking best practice reveals many opportunities to improve cost, safety, multifunctionality and even provide get-you-home features when ground support is unavailable. Some identified projects are guaranteed to fail. Some have far greater potential than investors realise.

 

The Executive Summary and Conclusions is full of new infograms, roadmaps and forecasts, easily grasped. It explains zero-emission aircraft in general aviation/ aerial work GA/AW and in commercial aviation. See how both business sectors involve vertical takeoff and landing eVTOL aircraft and conventional fixed-wing conventional takeoff and landing eCTOL. Both involve air taxis travelling in and between smart cities, freight and other missions. eVTOL multicopters are compared with vectored thrust. We calculate the viability of eVTOL for inside cities and for city-to-city travel showing what will succeed in genuinely saving time and cost against what alternatives will be available on and underground when they deploy.

 

Newly important energy harvesting options are compared by type of aircraft. See six roadmaps from IDTechEx and the giants and 12 IDTechEx forecasts 2021-2041 (numbers, unit value, market value and forecasts by geographic area, aircraft size and powertrain type). Here is the IDTechEx forecast of general aviation 2021-2041, calculating pent-up demand for small fixed-wing aircraft based on historic graphs. Here is analysis of 100 projects in range vs climb and maximum takeoff weight vs range revealing what hybrids achieve vs battery-only and eVTOL performance.

 

Chapter 2 Introduction introduces emissions, certification, regulation, electrification of large aircraft called More Electric Aircraft MEA and battery vs hybrid aircraft. It explains planned 100 seat regional aircraft on batteries alone and long-distance fuel-cell options. See 2021-2041 infograms on "Radical advances in electric thrust" and "Achieving cost parity with conventional aircraft". Work at the giants GE, Honeywell, Raytheon, Rolls Royce and SAFRAN is summarized and the electric uniques of "distributed thrust" and solar airframes are explained, both now becoming extremely important for improving performance, cost and safety. Different eVTOL architectures are compared with helicopters.

 

Chapter 3 is exceptionally long and detailed. It appraises 43 battery-electric fixed-wing aircraft projects revealing technical excellence and mistakes, new technology options such as harnessing superconductivity, wind turbulence and sun, amphibious or achieving 300mph speed. Chapter 4 more briefly does the same for eVTOL. Chapter 6 reveals the opportunity and challenge for fuel cell aircraft fixed wing and eVTOL, showing latest progress and business cases, good compared to bad. Chapter 6 is on hybrid electric aircraft, mainly fixed-wing including imaginative forms for special tasks. Chapters 7,8,9 and 10 cover more detail on eVTOL technology options and business cases because these have the biggest investment and risk yet the least understanding.

 

The report ends with enabling technologies for all electric aircraft - Chapter 11 Batteries, Chapter 12 Motors and Chapter 13 Solar.

 

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