The Allplane Podcast #126: the electric jet engine, with Ivar Aune (SiriNor)

Ivar Aune is the CEO of SiriNor, a company working on an electric jet engine.

Yes, you read that right! While most electric aircraft projects aim to power a propeller, SiriNor is going for the very technology that powers most of today’s commercial aviation industry.

After all, a modern jet engine works by making a turbine spin. But while conventional jets rely on a combustion process that produces very high temperatures, SiriNor aims to replace that bit with an electrically-powered mechanism.

The result: cheaper, easier to build engines which are as performing as conventional ones.

All of this is still some time into the future, since SiriNor is still, by most measures, a young startup. However, Ivar’s team has already tested successfully one of its electric jet engines on the ground and it is aiming to have some certified and commercially-ready models for UAVs and ground-effect-vehicles within the next couple of years.

If this sounds ambitious, you haven’t heard it all yet, because the ultimate goal is to be able to apply the electric jet engine technology to larger aircraft, potentially even the A320/B737-sized airliners that are the workhorses of today’s aviation industry.

A rather tall order, indeed, but Ivar, who spend the earlier part of his career in the Norwegian oil and gas industry, has no doubts about the need for the aviation industry to make bold bets if it is to remain, over the next decades, the engine of growth that it has been to this day.

So tune in for a fascinating conversation about a truly promising, and rather intriguing, technology that has been, pretty much, kept under wraps until very recently!