Mmmhhhmm. Adds starlink small nano antenna to aircraft like on my car and smartphone/laptop as all capable cable repairman can pops.

When humans still believed in the geocentric model of the solar system they used the ptolemaic system to accurately predict the movement of the planets. When the heliocentric model was first proposed it was initially less accurate than the ptolemaic system at predicting movement because it was less refined. Outside of an early brief stint in the auto industry most electric motors were used in fixed commercial setting until semi-recently with electric motors becoming more common in mobile applications and transport and most R&D has been focused on fossil fuel based motors. Even though electric motors are comparatively simple it's nice to see there is still room for innovation and improvement for mobile applications.

So many questions after just renders and few figures. 1) How is it cooled? It mention that copper layout allows for better heat management but over time it need to be transferred out. back connections might suggest liquid, than if so is mass of coolant, pump and heat exchange included? 2) I am happy that it looks like ignorance to typical design of electric motors as that might be part of new fresh approach to problem, however there are reasons for standards in cases for electric motors and not as much with size or heat dissipating fins outside but mostly with the way motor should and can be mounted, now on renders there is no single attachment point for this motor, well there is shaft for gear box/propeller, but no way to fix other end to frame. And that is bringing further doubts about other things which are working excellently for this motor on paper and maybe in simulations, but until full real build proves it hard to judge...

''Aircraft around the size of a Boeing 737, those account for around 50 percent of all the greenhouse gas emissions in the aircraft sector.''......... All electric motors do, if replacing fossil fuel engines, is to transfer the emissions to the power station. So when transmission losses a considered, they exacerbate the problem. However, as CO2 and water are the main emissions there is no problem. CO2 = Global Warming is political myth. The positive side is that passengers are not flying in a massive fuel tank and are less likely to be toasted in the event of a bad landing. Whether the batteries will have a similar effect remains to be seen.

I don't see the point of getting excited over this development. If you are still using batteries,a lighter motor will only give another few miles of range,but the total range will still be pathetic compared with ICE powered flight. The future is in fuel cell technology,which has far more power density than batteries,and fast refueling times. There are already prototypes in testing: https://newatlas.com/aircraft/zeroavia-first-commercial-scale-hydrogen-fuel-cell-electric-flight/

H3X's development is another exciting step towards e-flight efficiency, even though it's performance projections still have to be proven to justify the optimism. I would imagine that the cooling setup would need to be modulated since the temperatures at ground level would require more, as opposed to the colder temperatures in flight.

The visual in my head of a Boeing 737-sized plane with 16 motors is not appealing. In fact quite ugly.

Still prototyping, I'll wait for the results of test flights before I believe this hype. Looks good on the screen. Just like 'global warming is a political myth' looks good on the screen. I believe what I know and I see - not just read on a screen. Great article Loz, but there are other questions prototyping can't answer like cost, duty cycle, maintenance issues, etc. Real world issues where things like hypercapnia apply!

You CANNOT cheat Mother Nature out of her due!! Until someone comes up with a way to generate electricity without impacting the planet in some way, then all of this talk about the joys and benefits of converting over to electrical power for transportation of goods and people, is just so much hot air!! Evidently, the number of people who can think logically and in a straight line longer than to just the end of their own nose, is quite small indeed!!

Randy

Others here have commented on the many yet-to-be-proven electrical and thermal engineering aspects of this concept. (It doesn't appear that they have a working prototype). I'll comment on a more mundane, but equally important, aspect: the required gearbox. Aircraft geared engines were rare, and not all that successful, until Rotax came along. Other brands had reliability problems. Rotax has refined the concept, but for a gear reduction of about 1:2.3. The electric engine in this article would require a reduction of close to 1:10. Doing that will take a lot of engineering. Designing a certification standard, and getting it adopted by the Federal Aviation Administration, will take a lot of engineering and a lot of bureaucratic maneuvering.

France has been happily running on nuclear fission power for decades. Way ahead of the rest of us as they often are.