Airbus’ Electric Aeroplane Prototype Is Eerily Silent In Flight

Airbus’ Electric Aeroplane Prototype Is Eerily Silent In Flight

Airbus just showed its battery-powered E-Fan 2.0 electric aeroplane to the public for the first time, at England’s Farnborough International Airshow. Standing still, it looks like a normal if slightly odd-shaped tiny plane. In the air, though, it seems decidedly abnormal. Where’s the noise?

The E-Fan 2.0 is the second generation of Airbus’s experimental electric aeroplanes. powered landing gear wheels accelerate it to 60km/h before the fan engines kick in, to save energy and reduce noise.

Pocket-Lint caught video of the E-Fan 2.0 flying around the airshow, and not surprisingly, it’s just about as silent as you can get. It’s like watching a non-powered glider — one that can take off from a standstill.

The tiny two-passenger flyer is envisioned as a pilot-training aeroplane, and Airbus hopes to bring it to market in 2017. The company is also exploring hybrid aeroplanes, where fuel-burning engines would serve to charge the batteries that would power the electric motors, as Airbus’s Dr Jean Botti explains:

Building electric planes to carry airline passengers is a tall order, but with Europe demanding a 75 per cent reduction in aircraft emissions by 2050, Airbus and others have major reasons to push this tech forward. Someday, we could be flying high in the silent skies. [Cnet; Pocket-Lint]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.