The Rolls-Royce "Spirit of Innovation" team has already completed key ground-testing and taxiing ahead of the first test flights in months, supported by the I-PACE.
The aircraft has been created by the ACCEL programme, short for "Accelerating the Electrification of Flight", which includes key partners YASA, the electric motor and controller manufacturer, and aviation start-up Electroflight.
"It is important to us that the ACCEL programme was carbon neutral and this will be supported by having all-electric cars for ground-support,” said Rolls-Royce Electrical director Rob Watson.
The Spirit of Innovation features an electric motor propulsion system delivering 500hp+ with the most power-dense battery pack ever assembled for an aircraft providing enough energy to fuel 250 homes or fly London to Paris on a single charge.
The I-PACE uses two electric motors producing a total of 394hp with power delivered by a state-of-the-art 90kWh Lithium-ion battery featuring 432 pouch cells.
Coincidentally, I-PACE is capable of 470km (WLTP) on a single charge – exactly the distance by road from London to Paris. With the ability to charge at 100kW, I-PACE drivers can add 125km of range in as little as 15 minutes.
The ACCEL project highlights Rolls-Royce’s commitment to ensuring new products will be compatible with net zero operation by 2030, and all products will be compatible with net zero by 2050.
Rolls-Royce will be using the technology from ACCEL and other electrification activity to bring a portfolio of electric and hybrid-electric products into the urban air mobility, commuter and more-electric aircraft sectors.
In a similar vein, the Jaguar Racing Formula E team’s experiences on-track help generate real-world improvements in Jaguar’s roadgoing electric vehicles. Several members of the ACCEL project team have come from Formula E backgrounds.
Just as Spirit of Innovation will pave the way to a future of electrified flight, I-PACE is an all-electronic forerunner of Jaguar’s future. By the middle of the decade, Jaguar will have undergone a revamp to emerge as a pure electric luxury brand with a dramatically beautiful new portfolio of emotionally engaging designs and pioneering next-generation technologies.
