Electric planes could be the future

Washington  - Imagine taking your next trip of a couple hundred miles. New York City to Boston,

for example. Or Houston to Dallas,

Tampa to Miami.

The obvious choice now might be to drive. But what if you

could show up at an airport at one of those cities, bypass security

checkpoints, board a small hybrid-electric plane with luggage in hand, and be

on the ground at your destination in about an hour - all for $25 each way?

A company called Zunum Aero hopes to make that a reality, so

that future travellers who normally take a car, bus or train for regional trips

won't think twice about flying. The Washington

state-based start-up says that since 2013, it has been developing a fleet of

hybrid-electric planes that would make those kinds of inexpensive, short-haul

flights possible.

The company has some heavyweight investor partners,

including Boeing HorizonX and JetBlue Technology Ventures, subsidiaries of

their respective companies. It also faces a number of competitors and

obstacles, particularly battery limitations but if successful it could

significantly change regional air travel where options have shrivelled and

costs have crept up in recent decades.

"Think of it as Tesla of the air," said Bonny

Simi, president of JetBlue Technology Ventures. "[Or] think of it as an

electric bus in the air."

Zunum Aero emerged from "stealth mode" on

Wednesday to announce its ambitious goals: to be flying routes of up to 700

miles (think Atlanta to Washington, DC) by the mid, 2020s and then routes of

up to 1 000 miles (think Los Angeles to Seattle) by 2030.

The start-up also laid out an array of promises, Door-to-door travel times cut in half. Lower operating costs. Airfares that

would be 40 to 80 percent lower. All on quiet hybrid aircraft that would

produce 80 percent less emissions. Indeed, part of the company name was

inspired by "tzunuum," the Mayan word for the hummingbird, for the

bird's speed and efficiency.

"To be perfectly honest, we've wanted to tell the story

for four years," Zunum Aero chief executive Ashish Kumar told The Washington

Post. "What we've been building towards is really exciting and we believe

fundamentally is going to change the shape of regional aviation."

Kumar thinks operating costs for the company's

hybrid-electric planes could be 40 to 80 percent lower than for conventional

aircraft. A small range-extending generator would be integrated into early

planes, kicking in on longer flights where battery power isn't enough.

The eventual goal would be for battery technology to become

advanced enough to have planes relying entirely on electricity, eliminating

fuel costs altogether, Kumar said.

There are several reasons that people rarely choose to fly

for short regional trips. Flying often means allotting extra time for getting

to the airport, going through security and then boarding. Also, the airline

industry's shift to larger planes and big-city hubs created what Kumar calls a

"regional transport gap."

Flights from midsize cities are now often routed through

hubs, meaning door-to-door times for those trips are no better than they were

50 years ago, Kumar said. And air options for smaller communities have been

dwindling or disappearing, he added. Today, 97 percent of US air traffic

comes from 2 percent of the more than 5 000 airports in the country, according

to the 2014-2034 FAA Aerospace Forecast.

About 95 percent of trips under 500 miles are taken by car,

according to the US Department of Transportation's National Household Travel

Survey. For trips between 500 and 750 miles, about 61 percent of travellers

drive and 34 percent fly. For trips between 750 and 1,000 miles, a little more

than half of travellers fly and 42 percent drive.

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Kumar and his team think this is where electric-hybrid

planes can step in. Whereas a Boeing 737 today seats anywhere from 85 to more than

200 passengers, a Zunum plane would have from 10 to 50 seats. Because the

Transportation Security Administration imposes fewer regulations on smaller

aircraft, those passengers would likely be able to skip long security lines.

Removing luggage check-in options also would save on time on the ground, he

said.

The resulting trip would feel more like a cross between

private corporate air travel and hopping on a bus. Still, the company is not

without its competitors and detractors. This year, a Massachusetts-based

start-up called Wright Electric announced similar plans to roll out

"zero-emissions electric airliners designed to save money and our

planet" within a decade. The Y Combinator-backed company, however, told

BBC News that it was relying on continued advances in battery technology.

Battery technology not there

"The battery technology is not there yet," Graham

Warwick, technology editor of Aviation Weekly, told the BBC. "It's

projected to come but it needs a significant improvement. Nobody thinks that is

going to happen anytime soon."

It remains too early to tell what the commercial aviation

industry will look like by the mid-2020s and whether one-way fares in the $25

range would be feasible then. Even now, it is not unheard of for low-cost

carriers such as Frontier or Spirit to offer double-digit airfares on domestic

routes.

That hasn't stopped others from diving into hybrid-electric

aerospace projects. Airbus has also been developing its "E-Fan"

hybrid electric aircraft since 2014, and in 2015 it became the first

all-electric twin-engine plane to cross the English

Channel. Though the "E-Fan" has only two seats, Airbus

is hoping the technology will lead to a regional airliner or helicopter.

Plans for helicopter-esque electric vertical takeoff and

landing aircraft have also been emerging from Silicon

Valley lately. The Verge's Andrew J. Hawkins reported that Uber,

Airbus, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency and Google co-founder

Larry Page are all working on developing their own VTOLs.

"Because nothing says 'I'm very rich and I hate

traffic' like a flying car project," Hawkins wrote for the technology

site.

In a statement, Boeing HorizonX said it was confident in

investing in Zunum Aero "because we feel its technology development is

leading this emerging and exciting hybrid-electric market space."

Simi compared the push for hybrid-electric planes to the

airline industry's advancement from strictly propeller planes to jet aircraft. "It's

that type of transformation," Simi said. "We're very excited about

where this is going. It's still very early, of course. We now have a seat at

the table at what we believe is going to be an amazing change."

WASHINGTON

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