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When skeptics of electric aircraft enumerate the reasons why these designs will never succeed, thermal runaway is usually somewhere high on the list. The risk posed by hundreds or thousands of lithium battery cells overheating into failure might be acceptable in a ground vehicle, where the driver can quickly pull over and get out if the battery catches on fire. Not so in an aircraft, these skeptics maintain, given that emergency landings are rarely so straightforward.
Developers of certifiable batteries for electric aircraft don’t claim the process is easy, but they deny that it is impossible. An important proof point came on Feb. 2 from Swiss startup H55, which is developing energy storage systems for a variety of electric and hybrid-electric airplanes. The company announced it successfully completed a full certification test sequence for its high-energy propulsion batteries, which was approved and witnessed by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.
Related: Batteries are a looming certification challenge for electric aviation hopefuls
The milestone is an important one for the company, demonstrating the maturity of its battery design and production line. It also has broader significance for the industry as an example of a regulator and manufacturer agreeing on the tests required to demonstrate that a large aviation propulsion battery is safe for flight.
“I think we have really a safe solution here and now it’s been tested … on products which are produced by the production line,” H55 co-founder and executive chairman André Borschberg said in an interview with The Air Current. With H55 now poised to deliver certification-ready battery modules to its customers, he said, “we hope that this will help to accelerate the commercialization of electric-based aircraft.”
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