Comment by omegant

Airbus 320 pilot here. This is something I've wondered myself for a long time. This same idea of a electric motor on the wheels powered by the APU(auxiliar small turbine for electricity and air presure, is the loud noise you hear when boarding the plane), is what some other pilots and myself have talked about for a long time. Just taking in to account that it makes you autonomous when pushing back and taxing, the long times you spend waiting for take of at the runway, it makes a lot of sense for this kind of planes that spend a lot of the daily time taxing on congested airports. I don't know exactly the reason why it hasn't been done before, I don't think is a weight or technology reason. It surely has seated on a TODO list for a long time, just take into account that in aviation we are way behind in aplication of the latest technology. For example we are still using single chanel radio for comunications with control( this is terribly frustrating and ineficient, it's pretty common to have comunication jams due to excess of traffics on the same frequency). Airplane computers even in new models are still 90s models (very slow but i suppose that stability is worth the boredom). There are a lot of other vintage technologies in aviation, after all every single release to production must be tested and approved by the FAA and EASA. It's the same for all major changes in systems and procedures. That makes all changes and improvements very slow and expensive.