The founder and CEO of the space company SpaceX, the electric car manufacturer Tesla or the neurotechnological start-up Neuralink has somewhat disengaged again on his twitter account. According to him, progress in the development of batteries will allow electric aircraft to be available for commercial travel as early as 2023 or 2024.
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An unprecedented leap
Elon Musk published the statement exactly two weeks after his carmaker published a study in detail, which describes in detail the significant improvement of next-generation battery cells. Apparently he found a strong argument in it: he shifted forecasts from last year, when he estimated that it would take at least another five years to reach the capacity of up to 400 Wh / kg needed to fly.
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However, such an increase would mean an increase of 50 percent over Panasonic’s 2170 batteries, which are currently used by the Tesla’s Model 3, adds Reuters. The Japanese electronics company itself has previously stated for the agency that it wants to increase the capacity of this source “only” by 20 percent, but also within five years.
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Musk is seen in the clouds
Interest server GreenCarReports is also leaning towards a slower growth rate. He writes that the energy density of lithium-ion cells in electric cars is growing at an approximate rate of about seven percent per year.
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Elon Musk is still positive. “400 Wh / kg of long life and series production (not only in the laboratory) is not far away. It will take maybe three or four years, “tweets the head of Tesla.
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Although several companies are already working on emission-free aircraft, the electric car is, according to the daily Independent she also undertook to build her own. Its founder and CEO have indicated this several times. Already in 2010, he even used his cameo, a short performance in the film Iron Man 2 about a fictional superhero, but also a billionaire, industrialist and inventor, to whom he told in it that he “has an idea for an electric jet”.
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In 2016, Musk said again that he had designs for a prototype eVOLT, which is an electric aircraft capable of vertical takeoff and landing, although he never published them. Two years later, however, he was told that Tesla’s interest would remain in electric cars and that the development of an aircraft into a socket “is not necessary” now.
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What does it look like with electroplanes?
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Seven companies, including Boeing or Uber, are now striving for such a machine with vertical take-off and parking during commercial transport, but even without Musk. The number one among them, the British start-up Vertical Aerospace, has already designed its machine and believes it within four years will be in public transport.
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And when it comes to long-distance travel, last December a six-seater battery-powered seaplane completed a successful test flight in Vancouver, Canada, for 15 minutes. Therefore, according to its MagniX developers, it should be the first fully electric commercial aircraft in the world. Together with the Canadian airline Harbor Air, which was also behind the project, it was the beginning of a new era of flying. They plan to electrify the entire fleet of airlines with more than 40 aircraft.
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Another turning point was made in 2017, when the Solar Impulse II changed the history of aviation by completing the very first orbit of the Earth on solar power only.
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