Furthermore, investment models for airports will be constructed, giving information about e.g. where charging infrastructure is needed, and how else airports need to prepare for electric aircraft traffic. Models for network planning will be developed, considering airports that today to do serve commercial traffic, and considering charging time constraints and charging prerequisites
Linköping University and LFV in collaboration
The project is run as a PhD study between 2024 and 2028, by Linköping University and LFV, focusing on how electric aviation can be developed in Sweden, but also having an international perspective. The results are expected to be valuable for a range of stakeholders also outside academia, including airports, airlines and aircraft manufacturers who will get decision support tools for the analysis of market, network and infrastructure requirements, which can help them in strategic and tactical decision making. For authorities and service providers like Transportstyrelsen, Trafikverket and LFV, the knowledge produced in the project can help inform decisions regarding how to develop regulations, policies and services, and the developed models can be used as additional support for related analysis.
Moving aviation to electric drive is an important step towards fossil-free transport. Full-electric aircraft have the promise to drastically reduce both CO2 and non-CO2 emissions. Electric aircraft technology is also expected to produce less noise, with a reduction of about 36% compared to current best-in-class jet-fuel aircraft technology (Schäfer et al., 2019). Furthermore, it is expected to bring a significant reduction in maintenance costs because of the greater simplicity of electric motors compared to combustion engines.
While there have been previous studies on how to best implement electric aviation, both internationally and more specifically related to Sweden, many questions remain.
A challenging planning perspective
The first generation of electric aircraft will have both limited range and limited passenger capacity. Thus, it will not be possible to directly exchange current routes that are today operated by conventional aircraft, so both multi-hop routes and increased frequencies can be expected. Furthermore, it may be beneficial to start utilizing airports that today do not serve commercial traffic. From a planning perspective, this is a challenge. For different stakeholders, including airports, airlines, aircraft manufacturers, and transportation authorities, it would be beneficial to have a better understanding of how the introduction of electric aircraft will change the aviation network. This would give support for decisions about future investments in infrastructure and aircraft development.
Among the challenges with planning for an electric aviation network are to consider charging time (or more unlikely, battery swap) in the turn around process, potential investment decisions at the airports where charging will be performed, and to consider the mix of both electric and conventional aircraft. The introduction of electric aircraft will be step-wise, where the first routes likely will compete with conventional aircraft routes and other means of transportation, like busses, trains or ferries. Furthermore, the demand for traveling with electric aircraft is unknown – the shorter range and lower speed is expected to reduce the demand, while the increased frequency, giving a better range of departure times, and the reduced environmental impact will likely increase the demand compared to conventional aviation. This makes it difficult to assess the impact of single new routes, and even more difficult, a set of routes in a network.
The aim is to develop decision support tools for electric aircraft network development
This includes studying which routes that would be beneficial to operate with electric aircraft, considering new potential airports, charging time, expected demand, competition from other means of transportation.
