Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1199133
44 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2020 a mistake. It's not dangerous, like in avionics or the car industry, but the pressure can be fairly high. Shaughnessy: How long have you been work- ing with LEDs? Beerhalter: I became interested in electronics at age 13, but I spent the first nine or 10 years of my "electronics life" without LEDs. After that, LEDs were my life's challenge. And when I was at university in 1993, I got one of the first LEDs of blue color from a Japanese sci- entist team who later received the Nobel Prize for the blue LED invention. It was extremely difficult at that time, from semiconductor pro- cesses, to create blue emissions of semicon- ductors. Shaughnessy: What advice would you give to younger engineers? Beerhalter: I like to design products because I like electronics and creating things. One of the best things in my life was being able to implement my ideas into products, and this is a luxury not everybody can have. I encour- age young colleagues to think out of the box. There's more than routing wires on a PCB; it's about implementing an idea. What always helped me is the story of when the U.S. president came to NASA before the Apollo 13 program and visited one of these big buildings where the rockets were creat- ed. They went down to the lounge area, and he saw an old man cleaning up the floor. The president asked that man, "What are you do- ing here? Are you cleaning up?" The old man said, "No, I'm helping men reach the moon." Our jobs have to do with motivation, and this story always helped me to think out of the box. Again, I'm not creating LED screens; I'm trying to sell emotion and a visual experience, which is a bigger scope. Shaughnessy: Those large LED screens make you say, "Wow." Beerhalter: Yes. We are the Louis Vuitton of electronics; nobody needs it, but everybody wants to have it. Shaughnessy: Thanks for your time, Rainer. It has been great talking to you. Beerhalter: Thank you, Andy. DESIGN007 ais. But the E-Fan was no ordinary aircraft; it was powered solely by lithium-ion batteries. The E-Fan became one of the first all-electric aircraft to successfully cross the Eng- lish Channel. It also paved the way for the next genera- tion of electric-powered and zero-emission aircraft tech- nology at Airbus. The original E-Fan has now been retired and is cur- rently on display at the Aeroscopia Museum in Toulouse, France. But thanks to the lessons learned from the E-Fan 1.0 project, a new aircraft demonstra- tor has emerged: the E-Fan X. This hy- brid-electric aircraft demonstrator is 30 times more powerful than its pre- decessor. With the E-Fan X, zero-emis- sion flight takes a giant leap forward. (Source: Airbus) Introducing the E-Fan X, a hybrid-electric aircraft dem- onstrator that is 30 times more powerful than its prede- cessor. The E-Fan X is the flagship hybrid-electric aircraft demonstrator at Airbus. But its predecessor, the all-elec- tric twin-propeller aircraft E-Fan 1.0, can be credited for playing a key role in laying the groundwork for the next generation of zero-emission aircraft technology. On July 9, 2015, the world of aviation witnessed a re- markable milestone. At the Lydd Airport on the south-east coast of England, a twin-propeller air- craft was preparing to embark on an important journey. Its destination? The Calais-Dunkerque Airport—just over 74 km away by air. Less than an hour later, the aircraft— known as E-Fan—landed safely in Cal- Zero-emission Flight Takes Giant Leap Forward