A Megawatt Electric Motor Created By MIT Engineers for commercial air-flight

The energy density of the battery seems a much greater impediment to electric aircraft than the power density of the engine.

@Sam -- Even electric powered flight will still make noise as fan blades accelerate the airflow that propels the aircraft. Electric flight will definitely be quieter than the noisy turboprop or turbofan engines used in current airliners, but there will be more sound than just wind noise.

Having worked on Experimental Electrical motors, 11:46 it is fantastic that MIT has created their version ! Know that the version created by the people I worked with is soon going into production! Awesome!

One very important factor on savings with electric flight is taxiing, a gas turbine needs even in idle about 60% of fuel flow, that means while on the ground airliners burn A LOT of fuel, electric taxiing would use a tiny fraction of that energy. So even if you have a hybrid plane where a gas turbine powers a generator, this would be magnitudes more efficient, as the gas turbine would only run during effective time from takeoff to landing, so we would have tremendous savings here. An airliner burns many tons of fuel while still on the ground, we are talking about a reduction in energy needed for taxiing in the range of probably above 90%.

I am a student pilot, and the aviation industry is very conservative due to them being very safety conscious, to the point where they have not banned TEL from avgas, a chemical banned from gasoline for cars decades ago. The batteries will have to be as energy dense as avgas and able to work in cold conditions, as well as reliability tell how much energy is in the battery

Happy Father’s Day Sam. My prayers are with you and your family.

Mega-watt motors already exist for a long. They are in a reservoir dam to regenerate surplus electric power back to another power reserve, in this case , water height. But they are built suit to their work condition which is slow rotating speed on huge torque. Of course it is a huge and heavy structure. In the case of such a motor on airplane , I think It might come to a reality on the condition of success in near ambient tempt superconductor.

Brushless 3 phase motors have forca long time had huge power to weight advantages over equivalent combustion engines..BUT battery density is light years away from having enough energy for electric aircraft.

Working on Experimental motor would be very amazing. Brilliant video

This would be a big step. Although, it might be prudent to take one step at a time. Try a hybrid power plane first to increase efficiency. for an example, the Ford 3.5 hybrid motor could be modified to have several generator units, since it would not be pushing a truck down the road, to create more than enough power for a megawatt electric motor. eliminating the need for all of those batteries. Like I said, a stepping stone.

Sam, you do very good work, and I like your graphics. Good reporting and very much appreciated. All good wishes for 2024.

Excellent vision of the transition from fully conventional engines to fully electrical future concepts I would hope that fuel cells could be cheaper 👍🏾

Not that startling, a MW is just 1207 HP at 90% efficiency. Tesla or Lucid could probably build a motor of that size without trying too hard...

battery weight is the issue not the motors

I am quite confident that the rest of the process (props, jets (of air)) will still make plenty of noise.

Wow, good video 👍

Beating the air with triple redundancy, so short hop flights are most likely for a while, but these motors are cool. Hydrocarbons are king when you are trying to defy gravity and drag. Best way of reducing CO2 is by not flying as much as we currently do. Transport CO2 is big, but passenger vehicles only make up 10% of CO2 in Oz as I understand it. So why did we start with passenger vehicles in the first place when flying is also big? Because its tough to find alternative solutions for flying. All the best for there endeavours though and more strength to their arm.

they could make the Battery pack so that they are swapable upon landing - AND if a battery fire did happen they could scuttle the pac over a chosen area - pacs would be sectioned into 4 so a fire would only be in 1.drop 1 keep 3 to get you down ..............nice safety backup and your welcome, you can use my idea.

Its just a hybrid, they are trying to do that same thing as the car industry and drive the prop from the combustion engine. Its far more efficient to fix the output of a combustion generator and take it away from the variable load and use motors with redundant systems to drive the prop, using the battery take away to load variation. Taking the combustion motors away from the prop makes the aircraft design more flexible, and you only need a small sustaining engine instead of a take off engine.

Thank you all, this stuff interests me, but did you know you can pulse electrify a motor, either normal or brush-less. I'm doing simulator experiments, for Electric Air, and Space craft utilizing PEDF's, Pulsed Electric Ducted Fans. As you may know, electrons plus resistance, slow a current but increase temperature, which slows a current even more, causing more heat, a thermal runaway scenario. So for a 4 motor plane, you can pulse the motors at say 5Hz, when a motor is sparked, it will begin to rotate, generating just a little heat, the attached fan will cool the heat, plus it's inertia will make it continue to rotate for a while, cooling or propelling even more, (thrust) exponentially. I only used 5Hz at the beginning, a spark for each motor plus 1 for the accessories, at 50% duty cycle, per second. Multiply by 1000 = 5KHz, there is barely a performance loss but the motors run much cooler, efficient, and with less wear, or breakage, and still leave a little power for accessories. It's an ongoing experiment I'm working on for mostly Cars, SUVs, Airplanes, Spacecraft, Helicopters, but also any computer cooling fan, or system might apply. Air or compressor liquid coolers as well? In my systems, the electric generator runs continuous, charging, but not the load, cycling, or redistributing saving, power, and, you know, cool-ness? Amen?