Cory Combs The future of flying is electrifying TED Countdown
Transcriber:
I work in aviation, but the truth is
I don’t much like flying.
Current commercial flights
are inconvenient,
noisy, expensive
and use ancient plane designs
that have hardly changed from the 1950s.
It also represents my biggest
personal impact on the environment,
just as it does for many of us
who fly multiple times a year.
Aviation will continue
to face fierce headwinds globally
even after the pandemic subsides,
because flying is becoming the symbol
of a polluting lifestyle.
Pressure is growing to decarbonize planes
or even cease flying altogether.
But the great news is
that a change which will reroute
our industry’s flight path
into fresh tailwinds
has already begun and is gathering speed.
This change is the third revolution
in aviation – electrification,
and it is happening right now.
Like the previous
piston and jet revolutions,
going electric will dramatically
transform the way we fly.
Electrification promises to make flying
accessible to more people globally
from more airports
while also making planes cleaner,
quieter and more affordable.
The current dominant narrative
is that we need to buy offsets
while waiting for some
miracle future clean fuel
and meanwhile keep cramming people
into tubes at increasingly congested hubs.
That fails to reckon
with the rapid progress
in electric technology
across nearly all other
forms of transportation.
So my answer in 2016
was to create a company called Ampaire
and develop an electric aircraft capable
of flying real routes for real airlines.
And we have done so with this plane,
the Electric EEL,
which first flew in 2019.
In 2020, our second
generation of this plane
flew with an airline partner in Hawaii
demoing daily flight operations
on one of their routes, a world first.
Meanwhile, we’re hard at work
on the third generation of the EEL,
as well as scaling up to a much larger
19-passenger aircraft
with the help of NASA.
Now, these aren’t yet
fully electric planes.
They’re hybrids.
And that’s actually my point today
and why the current
dominant narrative misses the mark.
Electrification does not only
mean pure battery electric.
That’s just not possible yet,
when you need to carry
passengers or cargo,
except for small trainer aircraft.
Instead, our industry must start saving
massive amounts of fuel and emissions
by electrifying
the entire aviation ecosystem.
Electrifying aviation right now
means solar panels
and battery backup systems at airports,
plugging planes into gate power
instead of burning fuel,
electric taxi to the runway
as well as electric tugs
and ground equipment.
For flight itself, electrification means
starting with small aircraft
and for planes
of meaningful commercial size,
payload and range starting hybrid.
Although hybrid isn’t the ultimate goal,
it is critical to start right now
rather than waiting
for future batteries or future fuels.
Think of cars where we had a small Prius
decades before a large Tesla semitruck.
Small planes like Ampaires
are the proving grounds
for electric technology,
be it lighter high voltage cables,
better compact motors
or advanced power electronics
that are key to unlocking
higher efficiency
in aircraft of all sizes.
Electrification will permeate everything,
from jumbo jets
becoming more electric aircraft
to repowering island hopper prop planes.
As batteries and electronics improve,
larger and larger aircraft
will get more and more electric over time.
This is not a pipe dream
but represents iteration
along a practical,
cost effective and achievable
route into the future.
Ampaire is being joined by other companies
that are also striving
to transform aviation to a cleaner future.
It’s a revolution in the making,
building on technologies
derived from electric ground transport,
inventing new solutions and taking them
higher and higher into the stratosphere.
Thank you.