Electrification, aviation’s underdog, takes the stage in Abu Dhabi

At the Global Aerospace Summit 2024 in Abu Dhabi, Josef Mouris, Co-Founder of ELECTRON aerospace, joined a panel alongside Japan Airlines and Emirates to discuss what a genuinely sustainable future of aviation could look like.

As expected, much of the conversation centred on Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). And Josef agrees: SAF is a crucial part of the solution — especially for long-haul, and for airlines operating fleets they’ll still be flying in 20+ years. But he also made the point that often gets brushed past: even if SAF scales quickly, there won’t be enough supply to decarbonise the entirety of aviation. Other pathways will need to carry a meaningful share, particularly on short-haul.

Josef argued for electrification — and reminded the room that big transitions rarely start where people expect. “If you’d asked Martin Winterkorn, the former CEO of Volkswagen, what the future was in 2019, he would have said diesel. In aviation, SAF can become that same comfortable answer — part of the solution, but not the whole answer.”

His view: as battery energy keeps improving, electrification will move steadily up the aircraft size ladder — and by 2050, 80–100 seat aircraft could be the backbone of short-haul flying. But it starts small, just like it did in automotive.

That’s the role ELECTRON is playing: building a five-seat, battery-electric aircraft designed for up to 1,000 km by service entry, using proven automotive cells packaged for aerospace. The point isn’t to jump straight to the endgame — it’s to get aircraft into service, learn fast, generate cash flow, and build the certification and operational experience needed to scale.

Because in aviation — like in the rest of the real world — the future doesn’t arrive in one giant leap. It gets built, one practical step at a time.

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