Airbus Switching Batteries to Avoid 787 Battery Issue

Andrea Rothman, in a post for Bloomberg:

“It suggests that Airbus thinks that the Li-ion problems could be intractable or at least take too long to fix to avoid the risk of inducing delays in A350’s entry into service in late 2014, so that suggests what everyone probably already realizes: this is a difficult problem and could take some months to resolve,” said Nick Cunningham, managing partner at Agency Partners LLP in London.

Airbus is making a smart move here. It remains to be seen how Boeing's issue with lithium-ion batteries on the 787 will be resolved. Switching to the more typical cadmium batteries is a sensible way to ensure that the behind-schedule A350 will not be further delayed by regulatory approval concerns surrounding lithium-ion batteries.

However, there is a price to be paid for this change. The primary reason that Boeing chose lithium-ion batteries is the fact that they pack a lot of power into a very small and lightweight space when compared to cadmium batteries. By switching to cadmium batteries, Airbus is adding over 200 pounds of extra weight to the A350 design. A big selling point for modern aircraft such as the 787 and A350 is fuel efficiency, which is partly obtained by lower weight than previous aircraft designs. In this case, every pound of weight savings is necessary. Adding that much extra weight will not make it easy for Airbus to meet its efficiency guarantees.

The Boeing 787 Failed a Battery Test in Spectacular Fashion Back in 2006

Dominic Gates, writing for The Seattle Times about a failed battery test on the Boeing 787 program:

During testing of a prototype charging-system design in the 2006 incident, “the battery caught fire, exploded, and Securaplane’s entire administrative building burned to the ground,” according to a summary by the administrative law judge in a related employment lawsuit.

The ruinous fire resisted the initial efforts of two employees with fire extinguishers, and escalated, despite the dispatch of a fleet of fire trucks, to destroy the 10,000-square-foot building.

It reached temperatures of about 1,200 degrees and resulted in losses of millions of dollars.

Despite the fact that Boeing won the commercial airplane crown in orders and deliveries from longtime rival Airbus, it has been a rough start to the year for the folks at the airplane maker. The reason? Issues with the 787.

Gates' article delves into more detail about the failed battery test as well as the FAA's role in approving Boeing's design for handling battery fires. The infographic in the article is superb.

Every new airplane model has its 'teething issues' during initial Entry into Service. The 787 is running into some atypically difficult issues, but I'm quite confident that the folks at Boeing will solve these problems and the 787 will grace the skies for many years to come.