One of the two pilots closing in on the first circumnavigation of the globe by solar-powered aircraft has made a daring prediction: that similar solar-powered planes will be making commercial flights within a decade.
The Solar Impulse plane that Bertrand Piccard and co-pilot Andrew Borschberg have been flying around the world has taken more than a year, and multiple stops, to complete its 35,000-kilometre journey. The pair expect to complete their odyssey when they touch down at their starting point in Abu Dhabi within the next week or two, after reaching Cairo July 13.
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The one-of-a-kind aircraft has the wingspan of a 747 but the weight—2,300 kilograms—of a family car. The upper surfaces of its wings and fuselage are covered in photovoltaic cells, and it is pulled along at between 70 and 80 kilometres per hour by four electric motors, each with less than 18 horsepower.
Nonetheless, Piccard boldly told interviewers at Bloomberg New Energy Finance this week that “before 10 years’ time, we will have short-haul electric airplanes for 50 people.”
Piccard said the Wright brothers’ flight in 1903, which lasted barely 12 seconds and managed a distance of less than 37 meters, “was the beginning of the cycle of aviation that put two men on the moon and allowed 500 people to travel intercontinental on the same airplane.” Solar Impulse, he added, “is the beginning of a new cycle.”
