The Electric Airplane Revolution May Come Sooner Than You Think (robbreport.com) 336
An anonymous reader shares a report: An all-electric mini-airliner that can go 621 miles on one charge and replace many of the turboprops and light jets in use now -- flying almost as far and almost as fast but for a fraction of the running costs -- could be in service within three years. But this isn't another claim by another overoptimistic purveyor of electric dreams. It's using current technology, and the first planes are being built right now. In fact, the process of gaining certification from aviation regulators for what would be the world's first electric commuter plane has already started.
The pressurised Alice from Israeli company Eviation is a graceful-looking composite aircraft with one propeller at the rear and another at the end of each wing, placed to cut drag from wingtip vortices. Each is driven by a 260 kW electric motor, and they receive power from a 900 kWh lithium ion battery pack.
Alongside its 650 mile range, the pressurised $3 million-plus Alice can carry nine passengers and two crew, and cruise at 276 mph -- up there with the speed of the turboprops that are widely used in the commuter role, if not anywhere near that of jets. But crucially, says Eviation chief executive Omer Bar-Yohay, "operating costs will be just 7 to 9 cents per seat per mile," or about $200 an hour for the whole aircraft, against about $1,000 for turboprop rivals.
The pressurised Alice from Israeli company Eviation is a graceful-looking composite aircraft with one propeller at the rear and another at the end of each wing, placed to cut drag from wingtip vortices. Each is driven by a 260 kW electric motor, and they receive power from a 900 kWh lithium ion battery pack.
Alongside its 650 mile range, the pressurised $3 million-plus Alice can carry nine passengers and two crew, and cruise at 276 mph -- up there with the speed of the turboprops that are widely used in the commuter role, if not anywhere near that of jets. But crucially, says Eviation chief executive Omer Bar-Yohay, "operating costs will be just 7 to 9 cents per seat per mile," or about $200 an hour for the whole aircraft, against about $1,000 for turboprop rivals.
Cool... (Score:5, Interesting)
Looked pretty good till I got to the bit about only carrying 9 passengers.
Re:Cool... (Score:5, Interesting)
It actually looks utterly awful, because it's still using traditional propulsion style of a small amount of fairly large engines. The revolution in electric flying is that you can use a large amount of very small engines, to the point where you can turn your entire control surface into a mass of tiny engines, allowing for significant aerodynamic advances.
I.e. something like NASA's x-57 test bed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The unsolvable problem remains the energy density of batteries. At least until we figure out something like lithium air batteries in terms of energy density with has been perpetually "two decades away" for something close to half a century.
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It actually looks utterly awful, because it's still using traditional propulsion style of a small amount of fairly large engines. The revolution in electric flying is that you can use a large amount of very small engines, to the point where you can turn your entire control surface into a mass of tiny engines, allowing for significant aerodynamic advances.
You mean MOTORS.
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It's a question of getting a working, saleable product to market in a few years or gambling on experimental tech that may or may not be commercially viable and then hoping you can sell the concept.
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Obvious problem being that this tech will not be working for at least two decades. Battery technology in terms of energy/weight is not even in the ballpark needed for viability. Best hope is breakthrough in lithium-air.
All you get is proof of concept-items like this one, used mainly for PR. You can find similar designs on pretty much all major airplane manufacturers for example. here is an example of PR for the major names you'll find in the story.
And before you try to sell me this thing as viable, do look
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How is it if a proof of concept if it uses a proven concept and delivers a working, viable product to the market?
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The revolution in electric flying is that you can use a large amount of very small engines, to the point where you can turn your entire control surface into a mass of tiny engines, allowing for significant aerodynamic advances.
I would expect the energy losses to bearings for lots of little shafts from lots of little engines to be overwhelming compared to those two or three larger engines with one shaft each.
Efficiency of fans goes waaaay down as the impeller size shrinks, and the noise goes waaay up. Think about the fans in your computer. I would expect the same principles apply when you scale up to airplane-size fans. Not only that, with a leading-edge composed of fans you now have guaranteed non-laminar flow over your liftin
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It's a passenger airplane. 650 miles is basically useless.
Re:Cool... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a passenger airplane. 650 miles is basically useless.
The distance from London to Glasgow, to give just one commonly traveled route, is about 420 miles, and the estimated driving time between the two is just over 7 hours.
In other words this place would very easily fill the role of carrying business passengers (or MP's, or...) between the two, with fewer carbon emissions, in less than a quarter of the time it would otherwise take. Another advantage is that we're talking about a small aircraft, meaning it can take off from, and land at, smaller, regional, airfields.
That you cannot see a use-case for the aircraft says more about your imagination or experience of the world than it does about the actual utility of the vehicle.
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This is an aircraft for four people. You just suggested a market that is served by aircraft that carry at least ten-twenty times that. And even they struggle due to lack of profitability, mainly due to airport availability issues.
Four people carrying aircraft exist in two kinds in modern world. One is cheapo Cessna-likes, used for pretty much everything short haul. This aircraft is about as competitive with it as Rolls Royce Phantom is competitive with a Toyota Corolla for being a family sedan.
Other is corp
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It's a passenger airplane. 650 miles is basically useless.
Maybe if you're trying to get across the Atlantic, but a significant chunk of passenger airplane traffic in the world is short local hops.
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And for that traffic, you're going to need a cheap reliable aircraft that can sit at least 40-80 people. Preferably more. And that needs to spend no more than a few tens of minutes on the ground before being back in the air for the next hop.
This is an extremely expensive aircraft that sits four and needs batteries charged after every flight. It's simply not suitable for the purpose you're thinking on any metric.
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Complexity. Combustion engines are much more complex than electric.
Re:Cool... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Cool... (Score:4, Informative)
Looked pretty good till I got to the bit about only carrying 9 passengers.
I live in a city of about 150,000 people. The most common airplane operating out of our airport is the Beechcraft 1900D, which seats 19 people. Trips are to the closest centres, which are all within 300 km.
So 9 passengers is a little low for replacing these planes, but it's only off by a factor of two. And range is just fine. So there's a market right here for planes that aren't that far off from what this company is offering.
Re: Cool... (Score:4, Insightful)
Point you are missing is that a CHEAP smaller plane may be economic with small passenger numbers.
Conventional planes need higher passenger numbers to break even and I know here (Oz) those rural destinations really hurt because of that.
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Point you are missing is that a CHEAP smaller plane may be economic with small passenger numbers.
Conventional planes need higher passenger numbers to break even and I know here (Oz) those rural destinations really hurt because of that.
Small capacity propeller driven aircraft are used a lot for short island hops, in places like Nauru and other pacific islands or the Channel islands here in the UK. I think the distances in Australia would severely limit a plane with a 650 mile range (1200 KM) however a short hop to Guernsey from Southampton would be ideal. However I'm sceptical about the numbers. They're probably fudging the $200 p/h operating costs by omitting costs that all aircraft have like insurance and some maintenance items.
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Re: Cool... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's almost as if you've missed all the stuff about driverless cars and pilotless 'planes that's been happening in the last decade.
Re: Cool... (Score:2)
Re: Cool... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I'd like to see an automated system handle a situation like Qantas 32. Or the Hudson crash.
And before someone goes "but most crashes are caused by pilot error": the vast majority of would-be crashes that would have been caused by automation are actually prevented by the pilots. Automation screws up all the time. In fact, many crashes that were caused by automation problems are actually classified as "pilot error" because the pilots should have been paying attention and prevented the crash. For example the Turkish Airlines crash in Amsterdam where the airplane stalled during a fully automatic approach, yet the pilots were blamed for not intervening when the airspeed dropped below approach speed. I have actually had a similar situation but reacted correctly, resulting in... an air safety report filed after landing. Didn't make the papers ;-)
Re: Cool... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yeah, I'd like to see an automated system handle a situation like Qantas 32. Or the Hudson crash.
Fair enough, but the OP is arguing that these will need a crew of four.
With automation, maybe they only need a crew of one. They can autoland at the nearest airport if something happens to the human.
I'm sure larger versions of this will be built, too. Even two or three more passengers means a significant change in the economics.
Crew and weight (Score:2)
With automation, maybe they only need a crew of one. They can autoland at the nearest airport if something happens to the human.
Not any time soon. You are hugely overestimating the state of the art in automation. Co-pilots are going to be a thing in commercial aviation for the foreseeable future. Its unlikely automation is going to advance to the point where co-pilots are redundant any time soon.
I'm sure larger versions of this will be built, too. Even two or three more passengers means a significant change in the economics.
A) it's not obvious that larger versions are feasible. The power to weight issues with electric motors and batteries don't scale linearly.
B) A handful of extra passengers doesn't change the economics wildly.
C) What matter is the total am
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Co-pilots are going to be a thing in commercial aviation for the foreseeable future. Its unlikely automation is going to advance to the point where co-pilots are redundant any time soon.
That's just an opinion based on current large commercial airliners.
Those same airliners used to have flight engineers on board but they've been made redundant by automation.
Do you think copilots are necessary in automobiles? Large trucks? Why not?
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We need to know numbers/causes before we draw any conclusions.
eg. How many flights total? How many of those were because people shoot at drones and generally want to do bad things to them?
Then there's the mentality: The Air Force probably see drones as expendable so they probably aren't spending much time/effort to avoid crashes where no humans are involved.
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No, there is no way this has any chance to be economical, not even if the plane, maintenance and fuel were free. You need to pay 2 pilots and 2 (I think?) crew, that makes 9 people having to pay for 4. That means already around $100/hour personnel cost, and that's like optimistic. In other words: the personnel cost of this plane is already ABOVE the END PRICE I pay for a flight ticket. There is NO WAY a 9 passenger plane can be competitive except for charter flights.
That's the same as any plane though. It's the costs on top that which vary. You're right though you won't see this as a passenger plane for the same reason you don't see any other 9 seat passenger planes. It's all about the charter and staff costs aside, it's going to cheaper. If it works as advertised that is.
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Are you kidding? Small planes are used to "puddle jump" between regional airports in the US, particularly in the NE, all the time. They have been for a long time, and I've flown on them many times. There is most definitely a use for a 9-passenger commercial electric plane.
Re: Cool... (Score:5, Insightful)
I flew on one of those when we went to Belize. The Alice could replace any of Maya Island Air's planes except perhaps the largest. But even then I'd argue that since they are so much cheaper to fly, you could just add a few flights per day to make up the 1 or 2 seat difference between the Alice and the larger plane.
Something else to consider is that along with the cheaper fuel costs, the maintenance costs of the electric engines would be much much lower.
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I wonder how they plan on handling turnaround times? Certainly they don't expect Maya Island to have something akin to a Super Charger with 8x capacity (or even reliable electricity at all)? Even then, an 80% charge takes 40 minutes. I wonder if they do battery swaps rather than try to charge in-place?
Use a larger battery at the airport. Done. (Score:3)
People don't do this with other consumables, like water or gasoline. Noone ever says, "a toilet requires 1 gallon to be refilled within 60 seconds. There are 5 million toilets in NYC, so the NYC water system must be designed to supply 5 million gallons p
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There is a lot of charter/ shuttle flight business, and in addition many businessmen also have pilots licences allowing them the pleasure of flying their own aircraft.
Small groups of people often buy shares in an aircraft like this, reducing the cost even further.
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The Alice could replace pretty much any of them except perhaps the largest, but I'd argue that since they're so much cheaper to fly
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Good luck finding a coal powered plane...
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Re: Cool... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sounds 100% like you could do Uber for the skies then. I mean, ignoring laws to turn a profit is Uber's core business plan.
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This is for fixed route city hopes. Including extra fuel requirements you're not going to get a lot of distance out of this, say 400 miles, which is bugger all.
Re: Cool... (Score:2)
...a technology that stabilizes hydrogen in a recyclable liquid that can be pumped...
Any energy storage tech with such limited inherent potential, density-wise, is doomed to failure: battery tech is rapidly evolving past what can be achieved with fuels based on light - and potentially cleaner - elements. There's a possible future for synfuels based on denser, heavier elements but it would be a niche ("cesium pellets" for your TR-3B's kinetic weaponry and attitudinal thrusters?) and probably a little ways off...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is really all hydrocarbon based fuels are, a carrier for hydrogen.
Not exactly, as burning the carbon also provides thermal energy. In fact, most of the energy stored in hydrocarbons comes from burning the carbon, about 400 kJ/mol CO2. H2O provides about 242 kJ/mol.
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this is a gamechanger.
Especially if they can make them self-flying.
The only downside would be if they take a long time to recharge the batteries.
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this is a gamechanger.
Especially if they can make them self-flying.
The only downside would be if they take a long time to recharge the batteries.
Hot swapping the batteries is the way to go. Unload one battery pack, put a fully charged replacement in.
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Hot swapping the batteries is the way to go. Unload one battery pack, put a fully charged replacement in.
You can also jettison it in case of a lithium fire. :-)
Something doesn’t feel right... (Score:5, Interesting)
260kw engines x3 = 780 Kw power draw from engines at full throttle. Control surface actuators, radio, aircon, navigation, lighting all have to draw power from the same battery pack... I’d wager this has barely an hour of flight endurance at full engine power. Worse if wing de-icing were also battery powered.
They claim 650 mile range at 276 mph, which is a bit more than two hours flight time... I realize the engines shouldn’t have to be at full throttle for most of a flight, but this still seems like not enough to provide an operating reserve to divert to another airport or wait in a holding pattern for long
If these fly I can only see them being approved for very short hops.
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It could very well be that the first half of the trip is climbing, and the second half is very low power or unpowered descent.
A typical cruising altitude is ~10km. So 98100J/kg, or 27Wh/kg. Velocity is 123m/s, so that's another 7,6kJ/kg. Call it 30Wh/kg. Now factor in battery / wiring / motor prop losses - you're now closer to 40Wh/kg. Now look at what percentage of your total loaded mass you want to be batteries. A quarter of the aircraft? That's 160Wh/kg (at the pack level, not the cell level), assum
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That is a typical cruising altitude for passenger jets. The Alice kind of aircraft rarely goes above 7 km.
Re:Something doesn’t feel right... (Score:5, Informative)
For the vast majority of the flight most airplanes are nowhere near full throttle. According to the wiki page [wikipedia.org], the powerplant uses 280 kW at cruise speed and the 966km range includes a reserve. At this point we just don't have any real info other than these manufacturer provided numbers, and given that they have lots of incentives to hype up their plane, we have no reason to trust these numbers. Purely based on the data provided by the manufacturer it's all possible, but who knows how it performs in real life.
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Around 20-25% of the fuel used in a conventional flight is just for take-off. The first time you see the fuel gauge falling fast in the first 10 minutes of your flight it can be a bit panic inducing, until you remember this fact.
Once at altitude and cruising the amount of energy required is substantially lower.
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The one thing you're really not going to have is *in-flight* refueling.
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Fly through a thunderstorm.
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You would not put a "generator" on it. But it surely has a RAT [wikipedia.org] as an auxiliary power supply.
Replace commuter turboprops? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a nine-passenger aircraft. No matter how cheap it is, it can't replace a common turboprop commuter aircraft like the Q400, which seats 80-90 people.
Below a certain capacity, the cost-per-seat doesn't matter because airlines can only get so many landing and gate slots, and general aviation airports aren't equipped to deal with the sort of volume that would be needed to replace them... not to mention that general aviation airports are usually MUCH worse accessible in terms of public transit and distance from population centers.
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Yes, and that turboprop costs 5x an hour to operate, but seats 10x. And I'm pretty sure those costs don't include pilot salaries. And, of course, you're right about the commercial use of these things requiring a lot of (limited) airport resources.
They may have a market though in those empty flights airlines use to avoid having landing/gate slots taken away from them for underuse.
Re:Replace commuter turboprops? (Score:5, Interesting)
Q-400 fuel tank = 6526L. At $1,50/l for aviation fuel, that's about $10k in fuel costs per trip, for a typical 82 passenger capacity configuration (90 max configuration), about $119 per passenger.
Alice battery = 900kWh. At commercial rates of $0,08/kWh, that's $72, which works out to $8 per passenger
Even when you factor in the range difference (2040km vs. ~1050km), clearly the energy costs are far lower for the latter per-passenger per unit distance. Practically irrelevant.
As for how much everything else costs (pilot, maintenance, depreciation, etc), I can't say. But as for energy, it's a blowout comparison. Aviation fuel is expensive even compared to road fuel costs, which are expensive compared to residential electricity rates, which are expensive compared to commercial electricity.
Obviously such an aircraft is not designed for busy routes. But it looks like an obvious contender for lesser-trafficked routes. It would be awesome for our domestic flights here in Iceland; our airports could probably charge at around $0,06/kWh, but fuel here is crazy-expensive. Scaled-up aircraft for busier routes will come when their smaller brethren prove their worth in their roles.
Today's battery tech already supports electric aircraft in such "puddle jumper" roles. Battery tech advancement is only required for longer-range air service.
Re:Replace commuter turboprops? (Score:4, Informative)
Q400 is a bad example. It is a very inefficient turboprop, built for speed as a jet replacement for quick turnaround times. Since it is quite a bit faster, fewer units are required to serve a route. Also faster airplanes usually get higher (hence more efficient) flight levels from the ATC.
This is, by the way, why the cost per unit distance is the wrong measurement.
That Alice is not this kind of a commercial aircraft anyway, more a replacement for the King Air kind of aircraft, or, judging from the looks of it, is meant to directly compete with the Piaggio P180.
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While the big airports probably have limited landing slots there are usually unused airports around that could be reactivated. Berlin has about 6 airports. One converted into a park, no idea about the others and the new one under construction is not useable since years. I guess it would be easy to have one or two smaller airports reactivated and use for close range flights to Dresden, Warsa, or Helsinki.
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Recharge, therefore ramp turnaround time would be a huge issue as well. Unless you can cram those batteries full in no more than 90 minutes the gates are going to get real full, real quick, with the associated fee's to boot.
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Wow, it's like nobody has ever thought about multiple battery packs that can be swapped.
Weight and logistics (Score:2)
Wow, it's like nobody has ever thought about multiple battery packs that can be swapped.
Wow, it's like you never thought about the fact that swappable battery packs weigh more than ones that aren't and that weigh matters a LOT on an aircraft.
Do you have any idea how much new infrastructure would be required to swap battery packs at the gate of a terminal? How much the extra structure and weight the aircraft has to carry to facilitate swapping? Swapping battery packs the size we are talking about here is a huge logistical and engineering problem. Maybe it can be made to work but it isn't obv
Re:Replace commuter turboprops? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, you're saying that a startup company's first aircraft isn't going to suddenly displace the many tens of thousands of turboprop commuter aircraft operating today?
Gee, too bad their business model assumes that their first aircraft will displace all current turboprop business, I presume based on no evidence whatsoever and against all common sense.
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It's not competing with common turboprop commuter aircraft any more than a Tesla is competing with common petrol commuter cars. It's for businesses who use private aircraft to ferry the C levels around.
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This is a nine-passenger aircraft. No matter how cheap it is, it can't replace a common turboprop commuter aircraft like the Q400, which seats 80-90 people.
Correct. This is an alternative to aircraft like the Beechcraft Superking which is most notable as a commercial island hopper.
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A comparable turboprop (PC-12 and TBM 850, 6-8 passengers) has a variable cost of about $600 per hour to operate and a similar purchase cost:
https://www.avbuyer.com/articl... [avbuyer.com]
The Q400 costs significantly more per hour: https://prijet.com/operating_c... [prijet.com]
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Below a certain capacity, the cost-per-seat doesn't matter because airlines can only get so many landing and gate slots, and general aviation airports aren't equipped to deal with the sort of volume that would be needed to replace them... not to mention that general aviation airports are usually MUCH worse accessible in terms of public transit and distance from population centers.
So you build more general aviation airports. Since the planes will be quieter, you can build them closer to population centers. You use them for short hops, moving those flights out of the large airports and freeing up capacity. It's not a complete solution, it's a partial solution. It won't solve all the problems, but it will solve problems.
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Airport slots aren't free. And the battery + engine weight scales up exponentially as you grow unless you can find a new manufacturing process. This plane's battery pack already has three times the weight than it has cargo capacity and it could only power its engines for ~1 hour.
Flights across a nation are often 2-4h, international 8-20h. So you have to double the plane's batteries and engines just to take the same load on your average flight. 20x ($600M) to start comparing with a regular small $30M commute
If they added the ability to rotate the propellers (Score:2)
you wouldn't need an airport for take offs or landings.
I was curious about the de-icing electrical requirements as well, since winter turboprop trip make me nervous everytime.
Reduced maintenance costs will save heaps... (Score:3)
Electric, compared to turboprop/jet, should be very low maintenance. This will also be a huge win for short-haul flights like these.
Google: How often do planes get inspected?
A check. This is performed approximately every 400-600 flight hours or 200–300 cycles (takeoff and landing is considered an aircraft "cycle"), depending on aircraft type. It needs about 50-70 man-hours and is usually on the ground in a hangar for a minimum of 10 hours.
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Jet engines are comparably low maintenance parts (except for lubricant oil, that has to be filled up quite often) The kind of aircraft inspection you are mentioning - the A check - is far more than an engine check, replacing jet engines with electric engines would make little difference there.
Battery weight? (Score:5, Interesting)
They claim "current technology", but with current technology 900 kWh weigh about 9 tons (considering the battery pack). Ultimate density for Li-ion, according to this report [element-energy.co.uk] (figure 6-12), could get it to 3 ton or just below.
That's in any case a lot more than the payload for a plane that size. In general, current battery technology cannot be used on regional flights, much less intercontinental ones. Hydrogen may be an alternative for regional (still not long-range), though it might require making the plane look like a beluga to accommodate the tanks.
900 kWh on a 9-seater? Vaporware, unless they show what battery pack they are using.
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Your numbers are a bit off. The current Hyundai Kona has a ~68kWh pack* which weighs 453kg. So for 900kWh that would be around 6 tonnes, or 6.6 tons.
It would probably be less than that though, because the Kona pack includes all the support structures and water cooling. That stuff won't scale linearly, assuming they even are using water cooling.
* the listed 64kWh is the usable amount, not the full capacity which is secret but seems to be at least 68kWh.
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They claim "current technology", but with current technology 900 kWh weigh about 9 tons (considering the battery pack). ... not 9.
If you use batteries like in the current Teslas, it is roughly 4 tons
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Yeah, 260Wh/kg is pretty close to the cell density. But that's A) easier to achieve when you're making such a large pack, and B) for aircraft roles, you can afford to spend more on lightweighting and have lower requirements on ability to withstand impacts.
It's clearly a very lightweight composite aircraft. Lightweighting costs money, but when you're talking electric aircraft, that extra expense is well worth it.
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"A) easier to achieve when you're making such a large pack"
I don't think you should assume this. Tesla uses a small cell even for large packs.
A plane would require sufficient structure to prevent catastrophe in the event of a worst case battery failure. Big batteries aren't easier to make lightweight.
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It does however impose more significant loading on the landing gear and its connection to the frame.
That said, battery packs aren't dead weight - they function as stiffening elements to adjacent structural members.
This would be awesome in places like Utah. (Score:3)
About 20 years ago, Morton International (now Autoliv) used a private jet to shuttle explosive airbag initiators between the Tremonton, Utah and Brigham City, Utah plants. It was a 20 mile flight and ridiculously-expensive (because Learjet), but the initiators were illegal to transport via the freeway. Ultimately, the Tremonton initiator plant was closed. The airport closed a short time later because that jet was the only real reason it stayed open.
There's a lot of distance between cities in Utah. Brigham City isn't that big at ~18,000 people and it's a 30 mile flight North to Logan with a population of 50,000 or a 30 mile flight South to the Ogden Metro area with a population around 500,000. It's a further 30 miles to the Salt Lake City Metro area with a population over 1,000,000.
Booking full 9-passenger flights between Brigham City and Salt Lake City would be easy. A round-trip would be faster and cheaper than the FrontRunner train (which is supposed to link to Brigham City in the distant future) in terms of operating expenses, even at half-capacity. Engineers, Doctors, etc, who live in the less-crowded Brigham City area already commute to Salt Lake. Saving an extra two or three hours a day on the commute (not to mention the stress of traffic) is something people with the money would gladly pay for.
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It would definitely have to be a private service. Chartered aircraft are exempt from TSA screening.
I don't believe anyone would have to give up their car. Since it's a service geared for high-income clientele, it's not really a stretch for them to keep a car in parking nearby and use that to get around. For example, maybe they fly from Brigham City Airport to Salt Lake City, get on a dedicated shuttle to the parking garage where their in-town Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, or plug-in Prius is waiting on a charger
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Leaving aside the snide digs and cynicism, you do make a very good point, one which has been troubling me of late - albeit more in relation to the various governmental promises to phase out ICE engines in favour of electric cars, buses, etc.
While electrical power consumption has been relatively flat, across the EU at least, over the last decade, as increased efficiencies counteract increased sources of demand, I'm not sure I've seen credible plans for increasing power generation (anywhere near) to the point
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Less so for something like a plane, but there's a lot of cheap wind power generated at night and we can presumably scale that up pretty easily.
I imagine with some kind of clever smart grid control we can set rules like "always charge my car to 30% if power is less than $1/kWh, then charge it fully when it drops below 8c/kWh, and dump it back out to the grid if power exceeds $2/kWh"
That should do a lot to smooth overall demand, but it doesn't change the fact that it'll still will require a lot more windmills
How much weight? (Score:2)
An all-electric mini-airliner that can go 621 miles on one charge and replace many of the turboprops and light jets in use now -- flying almost as far and almost as fast but for a fraction of the running costs -- could be in service within three years.
Any discussion of distance traveled in an aircraft without also indicating the weight of the cargo (including passengers) it can carry is either marketing hype or fanboyism. This is EXACTLY the same problem discussions of flying cars have. The problem isn't getting something aloft. The problem is getting something aloft that can do something useful and do it reliably and economically. Batteries are (currently) heavy and they stay heavy no matter their charge state.
Another problem. So let's say it can g
What's the turn-around time? (Score:2)
Puddle-jumper airlines need to make multiple flights back and forth. Can't include an 8 hour recharge time. Maybe that would work for some sort of charter plane instead of private jets where the executives will be on the ground overnight or something.
Let's talk about weight! (Score:2)
How much does a 900 kWh battery weight? Google tells me that a Tesla battery pack of approx 90 kWh weights 1,200 pounds. My solar calculator tells me it would take ten of them to get to 900 kWh, resulting in a weight of 12,000 pounds. If use a little rounding and say our electric plane can hold 10 people, that's about 1,200 pounds of fuel-weight for each passenger. I should probably double that since this electric plane has half the range of a turboprop.
Is anyone familiar enough with turboprops weights
Quick number check (Score:2)
Tesla model 3 battery pack [google.com] is 475 Kg for 75 kWh. Works out to 5700 kg. So we are already 1350 kg over the limit, and we have not added the motor yet. So what to do?
Tesla pack has active cooling and is designed for automotive use and
I think it is (Score:2)
Re:Let me clear this right up (Score:5, Insightful)
Um... no. You can buy an electric airplane such as Pipistrel no problem. And obviously it's possible to scale it up. Question is though, where are the practical engineering and economics limits? Just as obviously as it's possible to scale up electric airplanes, it's currently not feasible to scale it up to rival an intercontinental airliner. But there is a lot of middle ground between a Pipistrel and A350.
Re:Ever seen a Tesla battery pack go up in flames? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever seen a Tesla battery pack go up in flames?
Kind of hard to stop and jump out at 20000 feet.
Ever seen what a shotglass worth of vaporized gasoline can do with regards to explosive power?
Kind of hard to use your argument when the risk factor doesn't really change regardless of fuel source.
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Ever seen a Tesla battery pack go up in flames?
Kind of hard to stop and jump out at 20000 feet.
Ever seen what a shotglass worth of vaporized gasoline can do with regards to explosive power?
Kind of hard to use your argument when the risk factor doesn't really change regardless of fuel source.
Jet fuel as used in commercial turboprop and jet airliners is much more similar to kerosene than gasoline in terms of volatility. Its flashpoint is generally above 38C (depending on exact mix) while gasoline's is minus 43C. Jet fuel will explode if pressurized and vaporized, which is why airplane crashes can produce spectacular explosions, but it is actually difficult to light an open container of jet fuel with a match.
All that to say, uncontrolled combustion, let alone explosion, of jet fuel in a moving
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Jet fuel aka Kerosine is basically the same as Diesel.
You throw a burning match into it and it gets extinct (most of the time, with bad luck you have a thin burning layer on top of the oil).
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Except we know how to handle jet fuel very, very safely, now. Extraordinarily safely. It also has a nice characteristic of not being explosive (or even combustible, really) in liquid form. We don't have jet fuel or gasoline spontaneously igniting under normal operations.
Compare with lithium batteries that are not yet to the same standard of safety. We see lithium batteries spontaneously ignite under normal operations pretty frequently still. That isn't to say that we won't figure out safe lithium batt
Nope and neither have you (Score:2)
Ever seen a Tesla battery pack go up in flames?
Not with my own eyes, no. And according to the data [cnn.com] neither have you. I have however seen literally dozens of gasoline powered cars burning by the side of the road over the last half century however with my own eyes and there were about 174,000 vehicle fires in the US in 2015 versus 40 total Teslas ever.
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Li-Ion accumulators have about 0.7 MJ/kg or about 0.3 MJ/lb.
But because the energy efficiency of a jet engine is only about 40 percent, the 16 MJ/lb are more equal to 6.4 MJ/lb compared with Li-Ion, which has a nearly 100 percent efficiency. Still, effective Li-Ion-energy density is only a twentieth of that of jet fuel.
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Starship is the word for today, of the morrow. Sieze the day by the ballz.
Do you sieze deez nuts?
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