World's First Fully Electric Commercial Aircraft Takes Flight in Canada (theguardian.com) 208
The world's first fully electric commercial aircraft has taken its inaugural test flight, taking off from the Canadian city of Vancouver and flying for 15 minutes. From a report: "This proves that commercial aviation in all-electric form can work," said Roei Ganzarski, chief executive of Australian engineering firm magniX. The company designed the plane's motor and worked in partnership with Harbour Air, which ferries half a million passengers a year between Vancouver, Whistler ski resort and nearby islands and coastal communities. Ganzarski said the technology would mean significant cost savings for airlines and zero emissions. "This signifies the start of the electric aviation age," he said. Civil aviation is one of the fastest-growing sources of carbon emissions as people increasingly take to the skies, and new technologies have been slow to get off the ground. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has encouraged greater use of efficient biofuel engines and lighter aircraft materials, as well as route optimization.
Check the range (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Check the range (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Check the range (Score:4, Insightful)
No, in the case of the first powered flight, it was easy to see that a bigger motor and battery will solve the issue. With this, you're already at a factor of 9 deficit (about what you'd expect given the energy density of gasoline versus lithium batteries, even with ICE losses), and there's really no way to overcome that.
The reason you're down in range is because of the higher mass per unit energy. That also kills your payload capability. So you end up having to make a much bigger airplane to carry 11 passengers and the extra batteries. And of course stiffen the entire airframe, and end up with something bigger, heavier, more expensive to start with, and limited in runway options...
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There are plenty of flights made where this range would be adequate already. It's useful today.
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we are all flying at the speed of light regularly.
I think you meant the speed of sound, though we aren't all doing that either.
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Nope. Speed of sound was broken like 50 years ago. Light speed. Technology always advances.
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Don't feed the trolls. It doesn't help anyone.
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If we had those electric planes 911 would never have happened!
Not if they used lithium batteries
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Lithium batteries can't melt steel beams!
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They can with a penguin pilot and some shark lasers ...
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Yes, but electric planes have 2 problems.
Fuel weight is carried all the time rather than being burnt off.
A car doesn’t care so much about weight as aerodynamics is the main source of energy loss.
Planes on the other hand have to expend energy to create lift so are very impacted by extra weight.
I don’t see electric planes going much beyond short hop low passenger until energy density exceeds kerosene.
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I don’t see electric planes going much beyond short hop low passenger until energy density exceeds kerosene.
And that's precisely the niche that the airline in question (Harbour Air) fills.
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There will have to be a huge leap in battery technology before civil aviation can consider a large scale move to battery powered aircraft, simply because a lot of the efficiency gained during a long distance flight comes from the fact that the aircraft weighs less and less the further it travels (as it burns off the fuel).
Some calculations I did a few months back (and these are rough calculations... cue the people who will take issue with my back-of-the-napkin calcs) indicates that an A350XWB which carries
Re:Check the range (Score:5, Informative)
Harbour Air runs a number of site seeing flights around Vancouver every day. These flights are short duration and only take a small number of passengers on each flight. While longer flights may not be possible now, switching over to electric for these site seeing flights would make a great first step. Lower maintenance costs plus novelty factor makes it better for the airline.
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Re:Check the range (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, and they do daily runs from Seattle to Friday Harbor and the likes (I was born and raised in Seattle). To move the same number of people, you'll need to increase the number of flights by about a factor of 9 (assuming same overall number of people, at the same airplane capacity usage). Lake Union, Friday Harbor, Nanaimo, etc. simply couldn't support 9 times the number of flights.
Obviously you should be in charge of Harbour Air because the current CEO must be insane. He never must have crunched the numbers before deciding to buy into this electric plane nonsense. You better head up there fast in order to save the company!
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Chances are this is just another gimmick. Someone selling something or using government grant money, etc.
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Chances are this is just another gimmick. Someone selling something or using government grant money, etc.
Yep, pilots who are founders and CEOs of successful airlines always fall for gimmicks /s
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No, I am saying the CEO is likely initiating the gimmick. I know. Hard to believe.
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The project was completely funded with the company's own private money. Given their flight patterns, they see this as providing a huge operational savings in terms of eliminating their fuel bill, and dramatically reducing their maintenance (as an electric motor is much less maintenance intensive than a piston pounder, or turbine engine).
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The math - really, the physics - just doesn't work out.
So the CEO knows his market. If he replaces his fleet of site seeing planes with electric models (which have operational profiles in the same ball park as this demonstrator) then by definition this does work out and is a valid proposition and not marketing and not a stunt.
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He's going to need to dramatically increase the size of his fleet to maintain the same capacity. By about a factor of 7 to 9. Given a price of around $500K for a standard Beaver, and a current fleet of 53 airplanes, he's going to need $200 million to expand. Pretty aggressive when you make $50MM in revenue (not profit - gross revenue) a year.
I believe this is more a publicity stunt to raise awareness of his small airline, rather than a total move to electrification (which would take close to a quarter of
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Most of their fleet is Otter or Twin Otter aircraft. The Beaver was/is a technology demonstrator. Both the Otter and Twin Otter have much higher MTOW than the Beaver, and can carry both more passengers and more batteries. For the short duration of the majority of their flights, they believe the technology will work (they're looking for a 45 minute useful flight time, while carrying the same capacity), which covers all their routes.
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you must never venture east of the cascades my friend.
It's like texas out there.
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They are trying to build two giant runways at public expense that will cover almost all of Lake Union, and that the surrounding neighbors are not at all happy about.
Maybe if they want 9 times as many flights, they need to relocate to Elliot Bay?
Re:Check the range (Score:5, Insightful)
There are lots of places where this is all that's needed. Harbour Air operates short flights on the BC coast, flying primarily between Victoria, Vancouver, and down to Seattle, with dozens of flights every day. These flights are typically 15mins long (Victoria to Vancouver for example is something like 12mins from takeoff to landing).
Sure, it's not ready for bigger flights, but there are niches where it works well, and gets the technology rolled out. Gotta start somewhere, this seems apt.
Re: Check the range (Score:2)
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All is good - till you get stuck in a holding pattern for some reason.
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The beauty of a float plane flying in a coastal region is that much of the world below you is a valid landing strip.
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I've spent a lot of time in the waters in the PNW. Other than Georgia Strait itself, the water within the Gulf Islands (which covers about half the route) plus Mill Bay, north of Victoria, are all suitable locations to put down, if you have to. There are many sea plane landing areas indicated on the charts for these areas.
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Wouldn't it be more economical, then, to have fewer flights (like 1-2 a day), and carry more passengers per flight? For a short hop, a 777 is terrible; fill it to near-capacity (450 people) for a long haul (17,000 km) and you get (based on a 171,000 liter tank) about 44 passenger-km per liter - that's a mighty impressive efficiency per liter.
So if we're interested in efficiency, do fewer, more passenger flights per day. That would save a lot more total energy. This approach - cutting the passenger capaci
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Plus my first computer only had 64KB of memory. Obviously the guy doesn't know what he is talking about!
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The point, which people often completely miss, is that that 40 mile range was BETTER than what came BEFORE it (a horse).
Some people act like technology determines whether an idea succeeds or fails. DEMAND for the idea is what determines that. The Model T succeeded because millions of people saw the value in it. Then improvements can happen incrementally, and those improvements will survive if there is demand for them.
In this particular case, it appears that the company does short sightseeing tours. The
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Yes, but this is Harbour Air. Their primary routes are Vancouver Harbour -> Victoria Harbour, Vancouver Harbour -> Nanaimo Harbour, Vancouver Harbour -> YVR, and then local sightseeing. All of these are short-haul flights, less than 100 miles. Nothing will fly commercially without a 30 minute reserve, either JET-A or Electric, so it's no big deal either.
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"This is a sixty-year-old plane retrofitted at minimum cost. It's fantastic that it's already commercially viable! This is a very positive sign that our current battery technology is enough. A plane designed as electric from the ground up should easily be capable of serving many, many commuter flights around the world."
Now there is some solid logic.
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If they only need 100 mile range 6 passenger planes, why did they buy 450 mile 11 passenger planes? No doubt because the market for 100/6 planes is so tiny that to manufacture such a plane would be enormously expensive. Nothing here changes that.
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They used the Beaver because they already owned it, and it was in for overhaul anyhow, and that aircraft would likely have been parked for the winter. The airline in question (Harbour Air) operates the world's largest fleet of DeHaviland bush planes (Beaver, Otter, and Twin Otter). There's a reason why they use these aircraft.
You need to do much better than this (Score:2)
100 mile range.
When it gets to be 5x to 10x of that give me a call.
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Maybe if they up the clock speed or add more cores or increase the die size, right?
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Energy density/Specific energy (Score:5, Informative)
Kerosene (commercial jet fuel) has an energy density of 46.4 MJ/kg.[ref] [engineeringtoolbox.com] Modern lithium-ion batteries have an energy density of ~0.9 MJ/kg,[ref] [archive.org] which is a 20% improvement over the lithium-ion batteries from 10 years ago.[ref] [archive.org]
Aircraft burning kerosene has the additional advantage of shedding weight as they consume their fuel, increasing fuel efficiency significantly. Depleted batteries however must be carried along for the entire journey.
My point is that electrochemical battery-powered aircraft will for the foreseeable future be severely limited in range and cargo capacity, which may still be enough to fill some niche in society.
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Sure, but we didn't have Elon Musk 20 years ago.
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> Depleted batteries however must be carried along for the entire journey.
Throw the used/depleted batteries overboard. Problem solved.
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Wouldn't these planes use high octane gasoline? Which according to your link is about the same energy density though less dense so your point stands. Still for this airline (10 minute flights), electric sounds ideal.
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To add to this, the weight of the fuel is nearly 42% the maximum takeoff weight [wikipedia.org] of a modern long-range airliner. So getting the range of a long-range 777 out of contemporary batteries would require (46.4/0.9)*0.418 = 21.6 times the weight of the plane in batteries.
Because of the ne
Re:Energy density/Specific energy (Score:5, Interesting)
The energy density of fuel is much higher but in terms of useful work, only about 30-35% gets extracted by a turbine and ~20% using a piston engine, which is what that Beaver was originally fitted with (probably nearer 10% for a 1920s era radial). Compare that with >90% efficiency for modern electric powertrains.
The piston engine is also c.300kg mass but the magni500 is c.125kg and gives another 300hp: 750 vs. 450. That is 175kg of free battery, not counting all the pipework, filters, valves, controls, etc. that are not needed any more.
Yes, the hydrocarbon fuelled aeroplane has a big range advantage at the moment but it is not quite as extreme as the basic numbers make out. This particular use case makes sense for electric as short hops with multiple starts and shutdowns add maintenance costs plus fuel for warm-up, as opposed to an electric motor which can perform instantly.
Airframe update ? (Score:2)
160km and six passengers certainly isn't very much compared to the gas powered version, but remember that they didn't really change the plane itself. For developing purposes it certainly makes sense to start by electrifying an existing airframe. I am as well aware that the sturdy Beaver has proven itself as being very long lasting etc. but I am convinced that there will be a better suited airframe for this engine/battery which will bring a significant evolution of the performances. And yes, I know that's ex
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You might be convinced, but there are already electric planes that have been designed from the ground up that suffer from the same problems. Y'know because physics and stuff.
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Gee.
I didn't say that it will make up for all of the shortcomings, but that a signifcant improvement is feasible using a composite airframe for example.
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The issue is they specifically need a rugged airframe due to operating sea planes (water can often be bouncy/choppy). The biggest change will probably be in relocating the batteries into the wings, where the fuel used to be.
Are they quieter? (Score:2)
Are these electric planes louder or quieter than comparable piston-driven or turboprop aircraft?
Noise (Score:2)
Electric Aircraft Jokes (Score:3)
The definitive joke was already told decades ago, in the form of two book titles:
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I wonder if it has back up solar panels on the wings?
Good if needed during sunny days.
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I wonder if it has back up solar panels on the wings?
Good if needed during sunny days.
I'm automatically assuming that you're saying this in-jest, given the power production from that small an area of solar cells versus the energy required to power something this demanding.
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The solar panels are used to run the coffee machine in the kitchen area.
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I wonder if it has back up solar panels on the wings?
Good if needed during sunny days.
We're talking the NorthWest here .. you mean "sunny day". No plural required.
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Re:This is why I am unconcerned about CO2 (Score:5, Funny)
Definitely. Remember when computers had 64KB of memory? Now they have 16GB. Thus, even though this plane will only fly for 15 minutes, they will eventually be able to fly for 30 days continuously. That is how technology works.
Re:This is why I am unconcerned about CO2 (Score:5, Funny)
That is how technology works.
Extrapolating technology trends is fun!
A while back last century, "The Economist" looked at the number of blades in shaving razors over time. For a long, long time just one . . . and then a quick escalation to two, three, four and more!
By their intentionally humorous extrapolation analysis, our razors should have about 50 blades today,
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How do you count blades in modern electric razors? The number must be pretty close to 50 in a lot of them.
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Definitely. Remember when computers had 64KB of memory? Now they have 16GB. Thus, even though this plane will only fly for 15 minutes, they will eventually be able to fly for 30 days continuously. That is how technology works.
Geez where have you been hiding? The new Mac Pro can be specced with 1.5TB of DDR4 ECC RAM, and will soon be available with 8TB of SSD.
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Only as long as industry is kept in check and allows competition to breed. It's a fine line. Like everything in the world moderation is key
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"Moderation in all things -- including moderation." - Benjamin Franklin
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The Internet told me it was Benjamin Franklin, so that's what I wrote.
Re:This is why I am unconcerned about CO2 (Score:4, Insightful)
This airplane flew only 15 minutes in this first test flight but has a range of 160 km (about 100 miles), which covers the majority of all flights this companies does. Sounds like a reasonable approach in this case right away.
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Re:This is why I am unconcerned about CO2 (Score:4, Informative)
That's why civil aviation authorities in Canada require a 30 minute reserve when flying Visual Flight Rules in Canada. That's already factored in, and is no different than what's required of traditional aircraft.
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Reasonable, until your primary gets socked in, and your alternates suddenly go way below minimums, and you suddenly realize that your battery is quickly winding down. Having 30~ minutes of reserve power available for the what-if's really cuts down your radius of action. :/
On the plus side a full battery weighs pretty much the same as a dead one so as long as they can get a full charge there won't be any of that fuel/weight/balance calculations to mess with. That's assmuning they don't take days to charge which would encourage not full charges. Swoppable battery packs would probaly be good. Batteries are heavy though.
Re:This is why I am unconcerned about CO2 (Score:5, Informative)
They fly downtown Vancouver to Victoria and Nanaimo, and also to Vancouver International Airport, for a little over $100 CDN each way. They're actually super useful for lots more than just rich people. I fly them a couple times a year and they provide a great service.
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That should be great! Especially for commuting executives. They wouldn't need to fight the traffic. $100 each way is a good price.
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That should be great! Especially for commuting executives. They wouldn't need to fight the traffic. $100 each way is a good price.
Yeah, the Waterproofing and Wheel/Ski options on those Tesla's are horrendously expensive. And don't even ask about the prices of the 007 Submarine option.
Re: This is why I am unconcerned about CO2 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is why I am unconcerned about CO2 (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the "traffic" is a nearly 2 hour ferry ride that costs about $80 with a car, so yeah, it's a great option.
Re:This is why I am unconcerned about CO2 (Score:4, Informative)
Well BC Ferries charges about $50-$60 per vehicle depending whether talking about Victoria or Nanaimo so actually not too bad.
https://www.bcferries.com/file... [bcferries.com]
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They fly downtown Vancouver to Victoria and Nanaimo, and also to Vancouver International Airport, for a little over $100 CDN each way. They're actually super useful for lots more than just rich people. I fly them a couple times a year and they provide a great service.
I've taken the Victoria to Vancouver ride. It's a fantastic and affordable ride!
Re:This is why I am unconcerned about CO2 (Score:5, Funny)
Holy shit, that's stupid. Put down the Ayn Rand, and go to school. You have no clue what you're talking about.
Re:Hopefully... (Score:5, Interesting)
The plane comes with parachutes for everyone when the battery dies.
Like the same parachutes they use when the engine of regular avgas powered plane dies?
And in case you didn't know, Harbour Air is (I think) the world's largest float plane airline and they do a lot of flights between Vancouver and Vancouver Island. So there is plenty of open space to "land" on.
I've flown with them and it's a fun ride. Flying in an electric plane would be more fun.
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1000lb fuel is only around 150 gallons, and based on Wikipedia's chart of fuel economy for small commercial aircraft, that's a range of 65 to 300 miles.
This technology may work fine for short-haul flights, but for long-haul flights, continuing to keep what essentially amounts to spent-fuel onboard will eat against efficiency. Modern aircraft become lighter as they travel, which may serve to improve their efficiency numbers over distance. It also may suffer from recharge time, not allowing the aircraft to
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Electric engines tend not to be as bulky as aviation fueled engines.
There's a bit more work to do to squeeze out some more joules of performance.
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A Tesla Model S (7.2 lb/hp) doesn't even beat a Bombardier turbo prop (6.6 lb/hp).
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That's super surprising because Tesla was definitely going for the lightest weight motor possible so it could fly.
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One of the things people do when they want to race, is use industrial electric engines.
There's a tradeoff in design, in that cooling becomes more of an issue, but that's why you test different designs, looking for the best range/power mixes. Something for an electric race car might pump out enough revs for a propellor plane to take off, but then you need to think about cooling. At high speeds (flight) birds and bugs can mess up air intake, part of why cowlings have back-facing intakes, and why bird strikes
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I can't speak to aircraft engines specifically, but Tesla's motor weighs around 350lb, and V8 engines that would be considered competitors weigh around 500lb. 150lb difference. I have my doubts as to how truly significant that weight savings will be compared to the penalty of carrying spent batteries.
Artice on the motor: (Score:3)
Here's an article on the motor [cleantechnica.com]. Has a nice video of it being spun up.
It was released in October. It's designed for this class of plane - and as a drop-in for this particular model. Power about the same as, and weight less than, the internal combustion engine it replaces (so the range ratio is primarily a comparison of the fuel and tankage vs. the battery system.)
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1000lb fuel is only around 150 gallons, and based on Wikipedia's chart of fuel economy for small commercial aircraft, that's a range of 65 to 300 miles
with estimations like that, I think i'll stick to driving.
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This technology may work fine for short-haul flights, but for long-haul flights, continuing to keep what essentially amounts to spent-fuel onboard will eat against efficiency.
Where I'm not disagreeing with you per say, I think the problem is endurance. Payload is secondary.
For a *commercial* flight, it is required that you have enough fuel on board to reach your intended destination, then fly to an alternate destination PLUS having 45 min of reserve. Assuming it's 15 min to your alternate, that adds a full hour to your required battery capacity. IF you are going on an hour flight, you need 2 hours of endurance. (Yes, this is based on IFR conditions, but this is *commercial* f
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Without having to carry roughly 1000 lbs of fuel the battery size is quite large. Don't forget that this first design is a just a converted beaver, which was not exactly an ultra light aircraft design in the first place. The initial electrical engine design having a 100 mile range is quite impressive considering how they chose to build it. If a new stal redesign of a pontoon craft is done with carbon fiber and other new lighter materials then I am sure that the range of the aircraft could increase and make it ideal for short haul work.
I am surprised that Musk has been upstaged on this one and in Canada of of all places! The De Haviland Beaver is one hell of a great piece of design work for the time considering how fast it went from the drawing board to the air. There is no reason why new stal designs based upon the original stal concept cannot be quickly developed and herald a new age in small air craft.
For the love of physics... What kind of tripe is this?
Just because you apparently don't already know much about aircraft, I'll try to fill in the gaps in your understanding.
First, aircraft are already built as light as economically possible for the type of operation they perform. Many light aircraft are ALREADY build from varying types of composites, including fiber glass, carbon fiber and even reinforced honeycomb materials which are extremely light and strong. Why? Because one of the primary performa
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VFR regulations in Canada require a 30 minute reserve. The typical flight-time for this airline is on the order of 15 minutes, which means that with the mandated reserve, they need 45 minutes out of the power system.
The aircraft in question here is a technology demonstrator, and not the final aircraft. The power storage systems need to be finalized (this one just used Lithium Ion batteries strapped down in the passenger compartment), the motor needs to be certified, and the aircraft modifications themselves
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So you suggest that a commercial aircraft that flies at best 15 min flights which amounts to less than 100 miles which is limited to STRICT VFR conditions would be financially viable? I doubt it.
The problem with this aircraft clearly is it's limited endurance. I cannot see how ANY aircraft can be successful in the commercial market with anything less than 2 hours of endurance and I doubt that is even enough. This gives you about 1 hour of flight time, a 15 min alternate and 45 min reserve for IMC. Limi
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