Engineering major Rolls Royce announced the successful maiden flight of its first all-electric ‘Spirit of Innovation’ plane last week, with the flight lasting 15 minutes and taking place above Wiltshire – taking off from the Ministry of Defence’s Boscombe Down airfield. The aircraft, which has a 400kW electric powertrain, is said by the company to boast the ‘most power-dense battery pack’ ever assembled for an aircraft.
The flight marks the first in an intensive flight-testing process which will collect data on the aircraft’s performance and power, in a programme known as ‘Accelerating the Electrification of Flight’ or ACCEL. Partners in the scheme include electric motor manufacturer YASA and aviation start-up Electroflight.
“The first flight of the ‘Spirit of Innovation’ is a great achievement for the ACCEL team and Rolls-Royce,” said Warren East, CEO, Rolls-Royce. “We are focused on producing the technology breakthroughs society needs to decarbonise transport across air, land and sea, and capture the economic opportunity of the transition to net zero. This is not only about breaking a world record; the advanced battery and propulsion technology developed for this programme has exciting applications for the Urban Air Mobility market and can help make ‘jet zero’ a reality.”
As well as being the group’s first electric plane, the aircraft is being developed with the aim of breaking current speed records. While the current electric flight record is 210 miles per hour, Rolls Royce is aiming to get their model to break past 300 miles per hour.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: “This achievement, and the records we hope will follow, shows the UK remains right at the forefront of aerospace innovation.
“By backing projects like this one, the Government is helping to drive forward the boundary pushing technologies that will leverage investment and unlock the cleaner, greener aircraft required to end our contribution to climate change,” he added.
Rolls Royce had previously set their sights on updating its new product pipeline to be entirely compatible with net zero operation by 2030, and getting all products compatible with this aim by 2050.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps recently tweeted to congratulate Rolls Royce for the milestone, as well as British Airways who completed their first successful sustainable aviation fuel flight from London to Glasgow.
“Projects like this…support our decarbonisation goals & create green jobs in the UK” he wrote.
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