Airbus is best known for the 850-seat A380 passenger aircraft, but its E-Fan prototype seats only one and is powered entirely by batteries.
The French aerospace company is developing electric and hybrid technology to improve the poor environmental performance of conventional jet engines. Commercial electric aircraft capable of carrying passengers are some way off, but there remains a pressing need to reduce aircraft emissions and noise.
In common with the Boeing Dreamliner, the E-Fan uses a composite construction to save weight.
It doesn’t have the manoeuvrability of the E-Fan, but the Solar Impulse is far more efficient. The single-seat solar-powered plane last year flew from Switzerland to Morocco – the first inter-continental trip recorded by a solar-powered aircraft.
Highly efficient electric motors and batteries allowed pilots Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg to keep the four-engine Solar Impulse aircraft aloft throughout the hours of darkness during the flight. The journey was completed in two legs. The first, from Switzerland to Madrid took 17 hours. After a change of pilot, the aircraft spent a further 19 hours in the air before landing in Morocco.
Piccard is a Swiss adventurer who made history in 1999 by flying around the world non-stop in a balloon. He plans to fly Solar Impulse across the Atlantic in 2014.
The Solar Impulse has a wing span of 61m, which is comparable with a commercial airliner, but at 1,500kg the solar-powered plane weighs the same as a family car.
The pioneering flight follows seven years of research and development and takes the Solar Impulse team one step closer towards its goal of a non-stop circumnavigation of the globe.
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