A Dutch hydrogen plane: you can just buy it from 2035. At least that is the plan and the wish of Fokker Next Gen, a company that originated from the aircraft company Fokker. The colossus is based on the Fokker 100 (in fact, it is a converted Fokker 100) and it could be used for flights of up to 2500 kilometers.
Breeder Next
That doesn’t seem that far, but it is. Especially for a hydrogen aircraft, which has less space for fuel. Hydrogen takes up more space than, for example, the very environmentally unfriendly kerosene. This is a major problem for many companies working on hydrogen aircraft: hydrogen takes up so much space that sometimes half the aircraft consists of hydrogen storage. Not convenient, because this means that fewer passengers can take it, for example.
Fokker Next Gen is working with Rolls-Royce, which we recently wrote about working on a nuclear reactor for the moon. However, it is also busy with other forms of energy. Fokker Next Gen has also received a 27.5 million euro subsidy to help build this hydrogen future. However, that is only a piece of cake: these types of projects need much more money. Director Juriaan Kellerman speaks to Nederlands Dagblad about billions of euros. The project also has an advantage for us in the Netherlands: five to six thousand extra jobs would be needed to make the hydrogen Fokker 100 a reality.
Hydrogen plane
2035 is still a long, long time away, but that’s the date the plane should be commercially available. Then it will be put on the market and probably 150 devices will be made per year. However, there is of course a lot to do before that: the first demo flight should already take place in 2027.
Flying on hydrogen is an extremely challenging market: a lot is being developed on it, such as TU Delft with KLM, for example, but at the same time it is difficult to get a return on it because hydrogen takes up so much space. But as witnessed by the subsidies and the many initiatives, there is a real future in it. Especially now that the focus is so intense on flying, especially the unsustainable side of it and even ‘flight shame’ that people suffer because kerosene is so harmful to the environment, there also seems to be more attention than ever for alternative ways of flying. to fly.
