Airbus has lifted the curtain just a tad and given us a glimpse at the future of commercial aviation. At the Airbus Summit 2025 in Toulouse, the company presented a view of the technology that will create the single-aisle airliner of tomorrow.
Yes, but hydrogen has significantly more flaws than most other options. It’s been around for 50 years, has never been a commercial success, and just inherently kinda sucks.
Electricity has been around that long too though, yet there are no serious electric passenger planes (with a decent range)
It has it’s flaws, but it may have a higher ceiling in terms of usefulness. They say they can make it work, which is more than I hear about electric planes for example.
We should be financially encouraging 0 carbon planes, without controlling how, then let the engineers work what tech to do it with.
Worldwide diesel/kerosene biofuel production is too low. Last time airbus made a demo on 100% biofuel made from algae, they bought the output of a whole year to run a single long haul flight.
There is a reason they say Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and not biofuel. They also need e-fuel / synthetic fuel made from hydrogen in addition to biofuel.
…then there should be regulatory actions to help make them viable
Subsidising an inherently flawed technology isn’t the way to go.
What are the other 0 carbon flight options? They are all flawed.
We can engineer our way through flaws with enough effort though.
Yes, but hydrogen has significantly more flaws than most other options. It’s been around for 50 years, has never been a commercial success, and just inherently kinda sucks.
Electricity has been around that long too though, yet there are no serious electric passenger planes (with a decent range)
It has it’s flaws, but it may have a higher ceiling in terms of usefulness. They say they can make it work, which is more than I hear about electric planes for example.
We should be financially encouraging 0 carbon planes, without controlling how, then let the engineers work what tech to do it with.
You can also run an aircraft on biofuel with little to no modifications, with none of the downsides of hydrogen.
Worldwide diesel/kerosene biofuel production is too low. Last time airbus made a demo on 100% biofuel made from algae, they bought the output of a whole year to run a single long haul flight.
There is a reason they say Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and not biofuel. They also need e-fuel / synthetic fuel made from hydrogen in addition to biofuel.
There is a lot of biofuel being made of other fuel types though, so no reason why production of aviation biofuel can’t ramp up.
That requires lots of cropland though. Hydrogen can effectively be made by offshore wind farms etc.
It might work if we reduce standard fuel requirements for cars etc enough.