Michael Johnson
Couldn\'t electric ducted fans be used during say final descent to recharge batteries? seems like a better alternative to jet fuel engines.
Rohn
Current problem with electric aircraft has more to do with energy storage than motor power.
Eletruk
Not sure why they are sticking with the wing paradigm. Why not move towards a lifting body or blended wing body? The tube with wings design is sooo 20th century.
PeetEngineer
Where to start; the fuselage is very poorly area ruled, wings look too thin in comparison to fuselage inferring wing loading is too high, and the V-tail is partially obscured by the fan shroud which will offer poor control authority. Optimum thickness-legth ratio? Nonsense. Look up the Sears-Haack body - this looks nothing like it. I\'ve seen buses more aerodynamic than this!
Muraculous
Yes, this design is viable and elegant.
Slowburn
EADS is trying to placate the AGW cultist, with nonsense.
VHomer
More \"zero emissions\" silliness. These schemes just move the emissions somewhere else. It would also seem that the volume of LN2 needed to cool the motors would be fery high. Combine that with battery weight and even a very light airframe and the useful load would be small compared to a standard design. It is nice to dream. Science fiction has a habit of becoming reality.
Evan van den Berg
Personally, anything battery powered is kind of ineffective, because you have to still burn or generate electricity somewhere else, depending on what you use you could be producing more CO2 and such, or you could use solar or such with low efficient, then we can port it across a grid, loose 10% of the energy due to resistance, then store them in batteries that further reduce to efficiency by only being able to convert so much chemical energy into electrical energy, so, I ask, whats the point? If you want a more effective transportable energy source, I\'d go for hydrogen, not too many emissions(though its production still requires electricity) and it has a relatively high energy content.
Bruce Miller
In the new world, the Chinese, Asian dominated world of the 21st century, nuclear-electric bullet trains will supply all practical land transport, fueled by Thorium fueled, plutonium free, benign waste product, high thermal efficiency reactors, (Google Candu,Thorium, China) ( Google Tsinghua University Chin pebble bed gas reactors) As as Americans already know, as oil gets more expensive, nuclear reactor powered ships, much after the fashion of current day American aircraft carriers, Russian ice-breakers, will supplant all 19th/20th century oil driven, 2-stroke, olden times designed ships. Simply a matter of economics for the large Multi-National Corporatists. When the Oil costs curve meets the Nuclear costs curve, Bingo! We will go nuke! Save for a miracle in electric motor design, that reduces weight dramatically, and astounding discoveries for storing electrical energy, electric planes are a doubtful proposition, More likely, freight by dirigible or even Zeppelin styled technologies will come of age, making electric, even Solar assisted power practical. Watch for changes coming from the communist Chinese. They are unfettered by the American Corpocracies conventions, and stand outside its reign of influence as we speak, hence their recent and rapid advances.
Narendra Rajcoomar
I dont see this happening, what happen when u reach an altitude where the air becomes so thing ????