TECHNOLOGICAL RACE

The dominance of fossil fuels on means of transport seems to be soon affected by the young electric propulsion, which is clearly visible in a series of light aircrafts mainly designed for pilot training. With its light and ultra-sophisticated advanced electric motors directly driving the propellers, for a range of 50 kW to 2 mW, the German company Siemens AG, led the groundwork to this break of paradigm. It gave origin to models ready to be series manufactured, such as the Slovenian Pipistrel Alpha Electro, in the same way as it has also driven a real revolution in progress, of the eVTOL aircrafts for urban air transport.

TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGES

Siemens has no doubts regarding the gradual acceptance of electric propulsion, deemed by the Germans as being “the future standard of most of air transport in nearly 45 or 50 years”. For the time being, except for rare cases, Siemens has developed a series of prototypes of the most diverse power ranges to make viable fixed wing projects for demonstrating the versatility of electric propulsion, such as the “E-Fan” of Airbus (an aircraft with two faired propellers mounted on the tail), the already known acrobatic Extra 330LE (now with electric motorization) and the Magnus eFusion, just to mention some of them. Results are happening. For example, the Extra