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What Are Electric Aircraft? 19  Powertrain Architectures There are many variants of electric and hybrid-electric propulsion architectures. One way to categorize aircraft propulsion architectures is by their degree of hybridization, which describes how much of their energy source and power comes from batteries and electric motors. Figure 13 illustrates the typical powertrain architectures. Hybrid-electric architectures, for which there are various possible configurations, provide additional power to an existing propulsion system such as a turbofan by including an electric motor. The energy source for the motor can be a battery or a generator. Hybrid systems are less efficient at energy storage but are more efficient at energy conversion. Turboelectric architectures use kinetic energy from a fuel-burning turboshaft engine to drive a generator, which produces the energy to drive the electric motor. Finally, all-electric power- train architectures have motors that rely entirely on batteries as the only source of energy. These systems are highly efficient compared to traditional combustion. The main electric components of an electric aircraft powertrain are listed in Figure 14. Note: âFuelâ can be hydrocarbon fuel (e.g., Jet A1) or (in the near future) hydrogen. Figure 13. Electrical propulsion architectures.
