Rolls-Royce to help power electric planes as soon as 2025

Rolls-Royce Holdings, the enginemaker known for powering Airbus and Boeing workhorse jets, expects a fully-electric small aircraft in three to five years, a top executive said. The first commercial application of P-Volt, a battery electric system developed by Rolls-Royce, will have about 600 kilowatt hours of power, which will enable flying six to eight people as far as 80 nautical miles, Rob Watson, president of the company’s electrical division, said in an interview in Singapore on Monday. That range will keep improving with better battery technology, and may eventually be able to fly as much as 400 kilometers in the 2030s, London-based Watson, who’s attending the biennial Singapore Airshow this week, said. “We are confident in the technology. Now we need to scale it so it can have a meaningful economic influence,” said Watson, who was promoted to an executive role this year. “I think that’s where you see urban air mobility and regional air mobility, aircraft with 8-18 seats, becoming a real possibility in the next three to five years.” A slew of companies around the world, from startups to established aerospace giants, as well as some automobile manufacturers, are at different stages of developing aircraft that are powered by an alternative source of power, as pressure builds on the industry to cut back on emissions. The options being worked on include sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, hydrogen, fully electric, and hybrid-electric. <br/>