Inside a bustling hangar bay at the far end of Gloucestershire airport in South West England, a team of British engineers, designers, and data specialists are setting out to make history.
WHY? because they’re building a high-performance electric aeroplane unlike anything the world has ever seen. Scheduled to take to the skies over Great Britain in 2020, the aircraft will reach a speed of 300 mph – and quite likely more – making it the fastest all-electric plane in history.
This run for the record books is no stunt. It’s part of a Rolls-Royce initiative called ACCEL – short for “Accelerating the Electrification of Flight” – that’s intended to pioneer a third wave of aviation in support of Rolls-Royce’s strategy to champion electrification.
The electric aircraft will feature three high-power-density electric motors designed to produce more than 500 horsepower, and its all-electric power-train will reportedly deliver 90 percent energy efficiency. The battery pack will include 6,000 cells. That’ll make it the most energy-dense pack ever created for an aircraft, meaning it could fly the 200miles from London to Paris on a single charge.
“This plane will be powered by a state-of-the-art electrical system and the most powerful battery ever built for flight,” Matheu Parr, ACCEL Project Manager for Rolls-Royce, said in the announcement. “In the year ahead, we’re going to demonstrate its abilities in demanding test environments before going for gold in 2020 from a landing strip on the Welsh coastline.”
For more information visit Rolls-Royce
