Abstract
The work presented in this paper is part of a larger NASA study focused on investigating the characteristics and feasibility of an on-demand air transportation system that consists of a eet of small, electrically-powered, general aviation aircraft. The present paper focuses on the performance and design implications of using electric propulsion systems for these on-demand aircraft. As a part of this study, a procedure to create aircraft performance models has been developed. The procedure is used to model a Cirrus SR-22 aircraft to serve as a point of comparison and to establish condence in the approach for application to electric concepts. Simple performance and sizing tools are developed for battery electric concepts, and calculations are performed using these tools to study the feasibility of fully electric aircraft for on-demand missions. Results indicate that designing electric aircraft through simple modications of existing airframes are not likely to produce aircraft with practical range capability in the near term; however, innovative vehicle concepts designed to leverage specic opportunities available with battery-electric propulsion show promise in meeting performance targets as soon as 2015.
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