Credit: Special Arrangement
Bengaluru: Airbus will set up its first-ever digital proto space here in Bengaluru “Here we could very quickly prototype digital solutions and it should be operational by the end of the year,” Dr Grzegorz (Greg) Ombach, Head of Disruptive R&T, Senior Vice President at Airbus told DH’s Lavpreet Kaur in an exclusive interaction, where he also talked about Airbus’ latest innovations, the state of aviation manufacturing and technology ecosystem in India.
Edited excerpts.
What is the biggest challenge for the aviation industry today?
The current challenge for the aviation and aerospace industry is sustainability. And if we would like to be net zero by 2050, we have to work in so many different directions. One side is incremental innovation which includes working on new materials, aerodynamics and more digital solutions, and on the other side is disruptive innovation which means completely new propulsion systems, bringing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) into the game in the short term to hydrogen aircraft 20-30 years from now. As a market leader, we have to work on such dramatic steps from the technology perspective.
What new innovation is Airbus working on right now?
If you look at the current architecture, an aircraft has relatively short wings to make its entry into an airport gate easier. But now, with better materials and sensing technologies, we are increasing the wing length to be much longer and with this bigger ratio, we are promising up to 10 per cent improvement in efficiency. We call it X-wing, which means you will be able to fold the tips of the wings to make it shorter while landing to avoid issues.
Where do we stand in terms of inventions with SAF and electrification of aircraft?
There is no one solution that will bring us from today to 2050. It is going to be a combination of many technologies. While the incremental steps we have taken in design are great, but not enough. SAF is the key enabler for the short term to improve our aircraft sustainability because our aircraft by 2030 must be 100 per cent SAF-certified. Today we can do 50 per cent blending of SAF on our aircraft and honestly speaking, this is a great opportunity for this industry. But there are many challenges, not just from the aircraft design perspective, but also from an industry and ecosystem perspective. There is not enough SAF that we would like to load on the aircraft. Today we have less than 1 per cent SAF used.
Electrification is the next important part and has two aspects. We are working on the various levels of hybridisation for various types of aircraft and we are going to disclose more on this topic next year. Today what we are also talking about is going hydrogen as it can really make the aircraft zero emitting. But it comes with its own challenges both on the aircraft and supply chain side. We are still not sure if it is going to be a fuel cell-based solution or burning the gas directly to generate power, and to find that we are driving the ZEROe demonstrators.
Where are we on the supply chain challenges that have been hindering the deliveries?
The situation on the supply side remains difficult in 2023 and this will probably extend to 2024. We see signs of improvements but we are paced by most critical suppliers that are delivering on recovery plans.
What happens in the Airbus Innovation Centre in Bengaluru?
The Airbus Innovation Centre in Bengaluru is the third for Airbus globally after the US and China. We are looking at co-developing opportunities with the external ecosystem including startups, MSMEs, big tech enterprises and academia for research. The centre is fully capable of speeding up the transformation of minimum viable products into full-fledged industrialisation projects to create value and impact for the aerospace and defence ecosystems.
Tell us about your plans to expand manufacturing in India.
Today, $750 million of the global supply chain is currently done in India and we are looking to double it in the coming years. It happened for the automotive industry, where India emerged as one of the key producers and suppliers and growing globally very quickly. The aviation industry is going to follow the same road.