Airbus to Produce Hybrid-Electric Jet

Airbus has just revealed its plans for production of hybrid-electric jet aircraft by 2035. It is supposed to be a low-emission jet, which is good. They also say that such aircraft will be much lighter and safer than traditional aircraft.

Well, lighter, may be, but safer? Hybrid electric means they will have a lot of batteries. Remember, the introduction of Boeing 787 Dreamliner? At least four of these aircrafts suffered from electrical system problems when lithium-ion batteries overheated and started a fire. And what was the solution? The FAA decided in 2013 to allow Dreamliners to return to service after changes were made to their battery systems to better contain battery fires. Not to prevent fires, but to "better contain fires"! Well, I personally will be reluctant to fly on any electric hybrid jet.

Electrical Generator Animation

For many years I had an electrical generator animation in my webpage http://www.generatorguide.net/howgeneratorworks.html , which explains how generator works. That animation was courtesy of Joe Wolfe at Physclips Project at UNSW. The problem is, it was in swf format which requires Flash player. As we know, Adobe will stop supporting Flash after 2020. As the result, then most if not all web browsers will no longer display Flash videos. You already see this message when you open Chrome. So, I've converted the Flash animation into mp4 video. There are many generator animations on the web, but this one will work beyond 2020.