By 2020, Airbus, in collaboration with Siemens and Rolls Royce are aiming to test their first hybrid electric aircraft engine on a BAe146 If all goes well, sometime in 2020, a BAe 146 jetliner will lift off a runway in Europe with one of its four engines a two-megawatt electric fanjet, powered by a gas turbine. it will be, at the time, the largest electric jet engine in the world and some ten times more powerful than anything today. If that test, and subsequent ones, are successful, we could see the first fully hybrid-electric commercial airliners operating by 2030, producing dramatically fewer climate-altering emissions and saving vast amounts of fuel. Back in 2013, Airbus debuted at the Paris Air Show, its eFan electric prototype , a neat little two-seater powered by a pair of ducted fan engines. […]