An All-Electric Passenger Plane Completed Its First Test Flight (theverge.com) 102
A prototype all-electric passenger plane took off for the first time yesterday in a test flight that marks a significant milestone for carbon pollution-free aviation. The Verge reports: The nine-passenger commuter aircraft called Alice took off at 7:10AM yesterday from Washington state's Grant County International Airport. Alice is ahead of much of the pack when it comes to all-electric aircraft under development. It could become the "first all-new, all-electric commercial airplane" if the Federal Aviation Administration certifies it to carry passengers, The Seattle Times reports.
Alice's maker, Washington state-based company Eviation, is targeting commuter and cargo flights between 150 and 250 miles. That's like flying from New York City to Boston or from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Yesterday's test flight lasted just eight minutes, though, with the aircraft reaching an altitude of 3,500 feet. The purpose of the flight was to gather data to improve the design of the plane, which still has a long way to go before it can take off with passengers on board. Alice will eventually come in three configurations: a nine-passenger commuter plane, a six-passenger luxury plane, and an e-cargo version. The limited size has to do with battery capacity.
Alice's maker, Washington state-based company Eviation, is targeting commuter and cargo flights between 150 and 250 miles. That's like flying from New York City to Boston or from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Yesterday's test flight lasted just eight minutes, though, with the aircraft reaching an altitude of 3,500 feet. The purpose of the flight was to gather data to improve the design of the plane, which still has a long way to go before it can take off with passengers on board. Alice will eventually come in three configurations: a nine-passenger commuter plane, a six-passenger luxury plane, and an e-cargo version. The limited size has to do with battery capacity.
That is an very early prototype.. (Score:2)
At that 8 minute flight time.. So they like many similar companies are on the very early prototype stage.
That is none seem to have even gotten to "serious prototype" stage where it starts to resemble a final product and then there is the whole actual production thing after that..
The hard part is as said in the article the batteries weighting so much compared to chemical energy sources. None seem to have found any way to mitigate that..
Re:That is an very early prototype.. (Score:5, Interesting)
That is none seem to have even gotten to "serious prototype" stage where it starts to resemble a final product and then there is the whole actual production thing after that..
That is because developing a production aircraft is slow and expensive work.
The hard part is as said in the article the batteries weighting so much compared to chemical energy sources. None seem to have found any way to mitigate that..
The constraints imposed by the energy density of the batteries absolutely precludes us from doing certain things in electric aviation- like powering air liners.
However, for small 250-500 mile commuters, the energy density is more than sufficient, and converted aircraft are in use today.
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It will probably be like cars. Some early models that are basically fossil fuel conversions, followed by dedicated electric platforms that optimize the whole thing to be efficient and take advantage of electric's unique properties, like a completely flat floor.
Re:That is an very early prototype.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that's not how car development went. Back in the car's early days, when EV powertrains dominated the market, there was no difference in chassis between EV and ICEV. They all sucked.
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Pretty clear they were talking about early post-ICE electric cars, in which case they're right.
The pre-ICE EVs were never anything more than toys for rich people, like all other self-propelled carriages of the time (steam, clockwork, etc). I suppose technically they dominated the early market - but the market was so small it was hardly worthy of the name. And they really were more rightly called self-propelled carriages than cars - they were still proof-of-concept vehicles, and engineers had barely begun
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The pre-ICE EVs were never anything more than toys for rich people, like all other self-propelled carriages of the time (steam, clockwork, etc). I suppose technically they dominated the early market - but the market was so small it was hardly worthy of the name. And they really were more rightly called self-propelled carriages than cars - they were still proof-of-concept vehicles, and engineers had barely begun to redesign them in light of the new drive train and capabilities (like sustained speeds above those of a a walking horse)
I remember visiting a museum that claimed these early EVs could sustain 30-40 mph. At the time, that was plenty of speed. So, what was the real problem? Maybe there was no practical charging infrastructure? Maybe cost? Maybe durability? Maybe marketing?
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Probably range. Though considering this was decades before most cities were widely electrified the limited charging options probably didn't help.
Electrics never really had much problem with power or speed, but decent batteries really are a must. *Especially* in a world where electricity is still something of a novelty.
I repeat - lead acid batteries were high technology at the time. Take that abysmal energy-density, add a complete lack of aerodynamics, poor suspension, wooden wheels, lousy brakes, and dirt
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Early cars were *all* toys for rich people. None of them were practical for use in the way we expect a personal vehicle to be.
ICE, steam, and EVs all were viable options in the early days, each with its advantages and disadvantages. ICE and STEAM had a range advantage, although poor roads and lack of service stations outside of cities limited the utility of that. You used to buy your gasoline from the pharmacy in those days. ICE and EVs shared the advantage that you didn't have to warm up a boiler, you
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The pre-ICE EVs were never anything more than toys for rich people, like all other self-propelled carriages of the time (steam, clockwork, etc). I suppose technically they dominated the early market - but the market was so small it was hardly worthy of the name.
Well, we can argue about that all day, but ultimately what caused the market to grow towards ICEVs and not EVs was availability of refueling infrastructure. You could get fossil fuels shipped to places that didn't have electrical generation equipment. By the time there was a power grid, the fossil fuel industry was entrenched, and just as importantly (and oil-based) the pneumatic tire industry had gotten the realistic trip distance up to levels where the difference in range was relevant.
FLA batteries simply
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The constraints imposed by the energy density of the batteries absolutely precludes us from doing certain things in electric aviation- like powering air liners.
Unless, my good man, those air lines are dirigibles.
Yeah, I don't believe it either. Not with winds picking up like this. Still would be neato to have solar blimps.
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Re:That is an very early prototype.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Because if you want to power a powerful engine you need to provide a large enough current. So far that balancing act, which also needs to take into account how stable the energy is stored in the battery which is of the *highest priority, has not brought forward batteries that are both relatively high capacity (given their mass and dimensions) as well as being able to discharge well enough.
I remember my "chemical sensors" professor (some 15 years ago), who got his position because of his work on batteries, telling us about the amazing batteries that he developed. They combined both high capacity with fast discharging and charging, but would sometimes due to spontaneous rapid crystallization at the cathode (or anode, I don't remember which one) pierce other parts of the battery and cause it to explode, making it practically useless for virtually all applications.
Those 15 years can be a very long time though in a field that is as actively researched as batteries.
And given how useful electricity is as a universal energy currency for our societies, I hope that it's pursued further.
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With batteries it's usually always a trade off between capacity (ties into energy density per m^3 and kg) and at which rate you can safely discharge them (charging rate also matters, but not within all context)
Because if you want to power a powerful engine you need to provide a large enough current. So far that balancing act, which also needs to take into account how stable the energy is stored in the battery which is of the *highest priority, has not brought forward batteries that are both relatively high capacity (given their mass and dimensions) as well as being able to discharge well enough.
I remember my "chemical sensors" professor (some 15 years ago), who got his position because of his work on batteries, telling us about the amazing batteries that he developed. They combined both high capacity with fast discharging and charging, but would sometimes due to spontaneous rapid crystallization at the cathode (or anode, I don't remember which one) pierce other parts of the battery and cause it to explode, making it practically useless for virtually all applications.
Those 15 years can be a very long time though in a field that is as actively researched as batteries.
And given how useful electricity is as a universal energy currency for our societies, I hope that it's pursued further.
The thing about aviation is, a plane will expend the most energy during take off and a low amount of energy in comparison during the rest of the flight.
The other issue with battery powered planes is that the weight you take off with, unlike fuel, is weight you have to land. Fuel powered aircraft, jet or prop, are designed with the fact they consume fuel in mind so the plane is designed to be lighter on landing (maximum structural landing weight can be lower than maximum take-off weight). So planes that h
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The thing about aviation is, a plane will expend the most energy during take off and a low amount of energy in comparison during the rest of the flight.
the thing about that is it's bullshit. A plane uses about 10-15% of its fuel on takeoff and 80% of it while cruising.
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There are electric planes that have pretty usable endurance already.
The Pipistrel Alpha is already commercially available and has endurance of about an hour. That's not much but perfect for training and I'd imagine would reduce the cost per flight hour enormously https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Then there was that airline that does short commuter flights for Seattle, but I think they're modifying the planes and not buying new ones.
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That's not much but perfect for training
Eh... the specifications say it can deliver max power for 1 minute which doesn't sound like a good candidate for a training aircraft, especially when you're trying to do 8-10 touch and goes in an hour (and student pilots do hours (and hours) of touch and goes while getting their cert).
I couldn't find a POH on their website for the aircraft, so I can't really say much about its endurance, but I did find one for the slightly larger Velis aircraft (which is another two place aircraft with a higher gross weight
Puddle jumpers (Score:3)
>This is... not a usable aircraft for any meaningful work, including flight training.
Seems to me there's currently two markets for electric aircraft - expensive toys for rich people, and island hoppers and other short range puddle-jumpers.
There's a lot of places in the world where aircraft are the only convenient access method, and most of them can't physically handle large aircraft even if there were enough demand to justify them. That's where puddle-jumpers come in. You want to visit any Hawaiian isl
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I'm aware of short hop aircraft (I reference the Cessna 208, which is commonly used for that application, in another thread) but I haven't seen anyone actually produce an electric aircraft that fills this role--hell, the aircraft mentioned in the linked story proposes to be this, but is relying on some future battery tech that to achieve its goals (exact quote: ""We look like we’re going to have some fairly favorable battery technology available to us in five years."")
With that said, I don't know what
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here is an electric beaver from Canada: https://robbreport.com/motors/... [robbreport.com]
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Thanks for this, it's an actual link to someone doing something rather than just "our new eplane is going to be so awesome, just wait and see, here are some specs we hope to achieve at some future point." The downside... a Beaver with 185lbs of payload that has made a two minute flight isn't exactly earth shattering performance or proof of commercial viability, but hopefully I'll be proven wrong in the next half decade or so.
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The point I was making is that this aircraft does not appear to be a viable trainer. 42 minutes worth of flight time for local flight is not a lot of time to get anything done... maybe 6 touch and goes? Flying ten minutes to and from a training area leaves just twenty minutes to do any actual training You cannot do any cross country training, since the aircraft only has 25NM of range (assuming no wind) and cross country is defined as 50NM between airfields. You don't have enough endurance to take a chec
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There are electric planes that have pretty usable endurance already.
The Pipistrel Alpha is already commercially available and has endurance of about an hour.
Something that cuts into that usability is the 'fuel reserve' requirement.
Per CFR 91.167 Fuel requirements for flight in IFR conditions [ecfr.gov]. Except for some commercially unviable exceptions, fixed-wing aircraft need enough endurance to flight to the destination, and an alternate airport, and another 45 minutes. So the practical minimum for commercial puddle-jumping is more like 1.5~2 hours.
VFR requirements are less, and returning to the same airport helps, so 1hr might be useful for short training flig
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250 miles is enough to cover the distance from Westchester County airport to Martha's Vineyard (162 miles), or Paris to The Hague, Zurich to Frankfurt, Seoul to Busan, or LA to Las Vegas.
Something doesn't have to be the solution to all our aviation needs to be useful. To be useful we'll need to know more than the range, we need to understand the economics of operating the thing. Clearly this isn't going to replace a Gulfstream IV for crossing the ocean, but if it can replace a 5 hour drive with a 1 hour
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Just had a particular set of flight aspects to test out, then done.
For example, this flight did not even retract the landing gear.
So just the earliest, most conservative flight test, for safety.
Really nothing to do with battery capacity, I would wager.
Why no hydrogen? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why no hydrogen? (Score:5, Informative)
If we are at a point where we have hydrogen so cheap we can consider it a viable fuel for aircraft then we are one small step from synthesized hydrocarbons as an alternative fuel. With synthesized hydrocarbons there's no trying to get new kinds of aircraft certified, there's only testing the synthesized fuel against the specifications of the currently used petroleum derived hydrocarbons.
People have done the math on electric airplanes over and over, they keep getting the same result. Any electric airplane is going to be seriously hobbled against existing hydrocarbon burning options. To get anything approaching a useful range they are going to be limited in passengers and cargo, and then need to be limited in speed to keep energy burn limited. Any advancements in lighter materials or more efficient airplane shapes will be immediately applied to hydrocarbon burners and the performance gap gets even wider.
Fuels based on algae or some other biomass means the fuel is competing for land, water, fertilizers, and other commodities with food. Just being based on sunlight for energy puts serious limits on practicality. Using sunlight for power also puts this in competition with food. There's more to this world than the USA so if this is going to be a practical replacement for aviation fuel then it has to be something that works in places that has people more tightly packed and further from the equator.
If we are going to have a "bridge" from current technology to something new then we are just getting back to synthesized fuels and using the same aircraft we use now. Hydrocarbons are incredibly useful fuels for many reasons, it would take something far better than hydrogen to close that gap. Again, we know how to turn hydrogen into hydrocarbons. Getting the hydrogen is the hard part, we solve that then we solved the problem of getting net-zero carbon aviation fuels.
In the fine article was mention of an effort from the US DOE to develop net-zero carbon aviation fuels. I expect that to be far more useful than some electric airplanes that can't carry even a dozen people, and can't travel far. Synthesized fuels are largely a solved problem, we synthesize hydrocarbon lubricants already, and we "upgrade" petroleum products using the same chemistry as synthesizing hydrocarbons. The difference is in where the hydrogen comes from. Solve that hydrogen source problem and the rest is all downhill.
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People have done the math on electric airplanes over and over, they keep getting the same result. Any electric airplane is going to be seriously hobbled against existing hydrocarbon burning options. To get anything approaching a useful range they are going to be limited in passengers and cargo, and then need to be limited in speed to keep energy burn limited.
You speak as if battery development has peaked. Solid-state batteries hold great potential but it's a difficult engineering problem to optimize them. Even if electric air planes never fully displace fuel-based air planes, the goal here should be to minimize emissions.
Any advancements in lighter materials or more efficient airplane shapes will be immediately applied to hydrocarbon burners and the performance gap gets even wider.
True... but advances in jet design could easily favor purely electric systems.
Solve that hydrogen source problem and the rest is all downhill.
Fusion reactors should enable many new possibilities. Let's just hope we can hold out long enough.
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It's possible to make air combust but it requires an obscene amount of pressure.
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How do you have a jet engine without combustion?
The Russians, and to a certain degree, Americans, have both experimented with nuclear powered jets. It's entirely possible to build a jet engine with a heat source other than combusting fuel, but generating that heat from electricity is wildly inefficient.
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You speak as if battery development has peaked.
Welcome to slashdot.
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You speak as if battery development has peaked.
We can calculate out the physical limits of a chemical-electric cell, the working part of a "battery", and we are already quite close to the known limits. There's a chance we figure out some new limit but then that could be running up against the definition of a chemical-electric cell. Whatever this new technology might be is not likely to still fit under the umbrella of "battery". If that's the case then we aren't talking about battery powered vehicles any more. We might not be talking about electric v
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Battery technology has likely peaked. Solar PV technology likely peaked 30 years ago. Fusion was proven impractical a long time ago as well.
LOL! OK, sure buddy.
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Agreed that hydrogen is not as simple as it seems - to be useful, hydrogen needs to be compressed so you need heavy tanks, and you have some failure modes that battery air planes simply don't have. On the cost side, hydrogen through electrolysis + compression is much less efficient compared to charging batteries, so more expensive.
On batteries: Batteries are an improving tech. Currently exponentially improving, and we're just getting started - only a tiny part of the car fleet is on batteries yet. So it mak
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hydrogen needs to be compressed so you need heavy tanks
Nitpick: Cryogenic liquid hydrogen does not need to be compressed and does not need heavy tanks. It needs insulation, but insulation such as aerogel can be very light.
Re:Why no hydrogen? (Score:4, Insightful)
hydrogen needs to be compressed so you need heavy tanks
Nitpick: Cryogenic liquid hydrogen does not need to be compressed and does not need heavy tanks. It needs insulation, but insulation such as aerogel can be very light.
Cryo-cooling hydrogen down to a liquid state only makes the already sky-high energy cost of producing the hydrogen that much worse. I would not be surprised if producing liquid hydrogen was more expensive than producing artificial hydrocarbons(which can use an even lighter fuel tank with no need for all of that space-eating insulation or life-shortening hydrogen embrittlement)
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If we are at a point where we have hydrogen so cheap we can consider it a viable fuel for aircraft then we are one small step from synthesized hydrocarbons as an alternative fuel.
That is not how anything works. The idea that just because we can make hydrogen cheaply enough to not lose our shirts doing it we can somehow magically wave a wand and make synfuel cheaply enough is ludicrous. The one does not lead to the other. On the other hand, right now all fossil fuels enjoy massive subsidies, so you're competing with a subsidized price. The idea that it has to be priced based solely on cost is false. So it doesn't mean that, and that is irrelevant anyway.
People have done the math on electric airplanes over and over, they keep getting the same result.
Yes, and the result is that th
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Yes, and the result is that they are good for short hops and will have dramatically cheaper TCO, which has already been proven out in smaller planes.
I've seen that claim several times in this thread, but no one is actually referencing anything that shows this. Someone upthread mentioned Pipstrel aircraft but even with only 172kg of useful load, the performance characteristics of the aircraft are abysmal. I can't see any application where this would displace an existing GA aircraft. This may well not be what you're talking about and there is other data out there, so if you can amplify on your statement above, I'd be interested to see the examples you
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Someone upthread mentioned Pipstrel aircraft but even with only 172kg of useful load, the performance characteristics of the aircraft are abysmal
It doesn't matter if the useful load is poor now. The batteries are still improving, and such a plane can do some trips now. That it cannot do all of them is irrelevant except to claims that electric can do all jobs, which I haven't seen made by anyone credible anyway.
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This sounds suspiciously like "yes, the non viable aircraft you are talking about is the same aircraft I claim is proven to be good for short hops with dramatically improved TCO."
The problem is not that "it cannot do all jobs." The problem is that it cannot do any job. Note that if you took said aircraft and gave it batteries that were twice as efficient in terms of energy storage to weight, it would still be fairly useless (my math says maybe 80NM of range with no wind and a brand new battery?) and you'r
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No, I'm saying dinkier planes than this are already proving that the tech works. If all that's needed is for batteries to continue to improve to make these planes commercially viable, then good news! Batteries keep improving.
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No, I'm saying dinkier planes than this are already proving that the tech works.
I understand you're claiming that, and my original response to you (which I'll repeat now) was: I have seen this claim more than once in this thread, but no one is referencing anything that actually shows this.
To reiterate: that's great if this is a thing that works, please give me some examples of these proof of successes that you're talking about, because I haven't seen any and the math suggests that there will not be anytime soon.
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I understand you're claiming that, and my original response to you (which I'll repeat now) was: I have seen this claim more than once in this thread, but no one is referencing anything that actually shows this.
What exactly do you expect to be shown? Be specific. Otherwise I'm not going to waste time scaring up a citation when you can move the goalposts.
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What exactly do you expect to be shown?
I don't think I've ben vague here, but sure, I'll be explicit: give me examples of "smaller [electric] planes" that have "proven out" to have "dramatically cheaper TCO." I'll be further explicit and say that the aircraft has to actually exist today (i.e. the aircraft mentioned in the article need not apply, as it is waiting on batteries that may or may not be available five years from now in order to achieve the claimed specifications) and be able to do what it is allegedly designed to do (i.e. the Pipstre
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I don't think I've ben vague here, but sure, I'll be explicit: give me examples of "smaller [electric] planes" that have "proven out" to have "dramatically cheaper TCO."
My pal Gabe is now on his second electric kit plane [kitplanes.com], I think they are both conversions from rotax engines but I know the first one was. And there's about a double handful of other kit plane examples. That's how the commercial guys knew for sure that it was viable.
It should not be a surprise though because the hobby (toy, model) airplanes were taken over by electric a long time ago, and they have to deal with the same physics even if they don't have all the same considerations. There's good reasons why only
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First of all, everything else aside, thanks for the link--that was a good read, and I enjoy the guy's obvious enthusiasm for what he's doing. I was going to say that the aircraft is quite similar to the Pipstrel LSA mentioned, but... it does prove the point I asked you to prove, doesn't it? This is, indeed, a small plane with a very low TCO. Its application is "[very] short range pleasure flying" rather than something like "primary flight training." It meets every criteria I set out, so I'll cede the arg
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First of all, everything else aside, thanks for the link--that was a good read, and I enjoy the guy's obvious enthusiasm for what he's doing. I was going to say that the aircraft is quite similar to the Pipstrel LSA mentioned, but... it does prove the point I asked you to prove, doesn't it?
It does not. It does prove the point I wanted to prove, which is that we know electric planes are viable and reduce TCO.
Its application is "[very] short range pleasure flying" rather than something like "primary flight training."
That's the application of this aircraft, but you have not at all even begun to come close to proving that you cannot build aircraft for other purposes.
I still don't think you scale from here to anything remotely looking like viable commercial operations
You've made that clear, but you haven't shared any reason why we should give your opinion more credence than aeronautics engineers who have done the math.
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I see a lot of people make this argument and I'm just curious, how is this 'subsidy' given out?
I mean, they are a business, and I'm sure like any other business, they get deductions, write offs, etc....but those aren't subsidies.
Are you saying that the fossil fuel company, sends in a form to the US government, saying "we pulled x amount of oil" out of the ground, and the US govt sends them a
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if you really wanted to know, you could look it up: https://www.eesi.org/papers/vi... [eesi.org]
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Aircraft with a passenger capacity of say 10 and a range of say 250 miles have commercial applications. They can move passengers around as part of a longer trip involving the spoke and hub model. There are plenty of smaller airports in Europe that could move people to larger ones, if it wasn't for the cost and the emissions. An electric plane can significantly reduce both of those.
Ideally you want to have high speed trains covering all the major routes, but for less trafficked ones where the cost of buildin
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Aircraft with a passenger capacity of say 10 and a range of say 250 miles have commercial applications.
Very limited applications. If there's not enough demand for the aircraft then there's no economy of scale, each plane is an expensive build-to-order item than something built and stocked on speculation.
They can move passengers around as part of a longer trip involving the spoke and hub model.
The hub in this model is going to be equipped with the means to provide fuel for the larger airplanes, if the short spokes in this model need battery chargers instead of burning the same fuel as the big planes then that will impact the commercial viability. The short haul electric planes would need differen
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Aircraft with a passenger capacity of say 10 and a range of say 250 miles have commercial applications.
Very limited applications.
It doesn't matter how limited they are, what matters is if there's demand for them, and there is a lot of business demand for short hop flights. Many of them have been discontinued because of rising fuel prices. If you solve that problem, and also offer much lower TCO because aircraft maintenance recurs on a schedule and is very expensive, then it's reasonable to imagine that you're going to sell planes.
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Because you need infrastructure to manufacture, transport and store hydrogen. Every airport already has electricity.
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The fact is that it's much simpler to make a battery powered airplane than a hydrogen fuel cell powered one. For a smaller company it may simply not be feasible to make a hydrogen plane. Of course hydrogen has advantages (either as fuel cell or combustible) but it requires a lot more development work currently. Easiest should be these very light short distance battery powered airplanes or hybrid airplanes with battery + fuel. However hydrogen combustion and hydrogen fuel cell airplanes are both under develo
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Re:Carbon pollution free eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'd believe that was the case if the original post that was asking the question on where the electricity is coming from wasn't also moderated as a troll.
Apparently just asking the question is a problem because moderators don't like the answer.
an idea to increase range (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering that a large part of a plane's energy needs are for lift-off, I was thinking, would it make sense to mount a plane on a booster plane for liftoff, like a space shuttle was mounted on its booster rockets. This booster in my idea being also an electric plane, but an autonomous one that decouples once the passenger plane is at its desired altitude, and then returns to base for recharging.
Anyway, it is possible that my idea is a perfect illustration of Dunning-Kruger, yet still curious about opinions.
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I imagine the main problem with your idea would be safety. I suggest checking out the Mentor Pilot channel on YouTube, where he talks a lot about the procedure for take-off. It's actually fairly complicated, and one of the most dangerous parts of the flight. The pilots need to be in control and able to react quickly, in case they need to abort or take some other emergency action.
The parameters used, like the speed beyond which an abort is impossible because the aircraft would overrun the end of the runway,
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The other issue is you don't save that much fuel. Boosters work for a rocket because so much energy is spent escaping the gravity well. But for a plane take-off and climb is only ~20% [stackexchange.com].
The only way you get more savings is if you get away with smaller engines from not having to take-off.
But then the issue is with landing, because if you need to abort a landing the solution is to basically take-off again.
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from a search:
estimate by Boeing for the B737-800: fuel used for TO and climb = 2,300 kg.
estimate fuel burn in cruise for B737-800 is 2,500 kg/hr
estimate fuel burn at idle of a CFM56 engine = 300 kg/hr, so for the half hour descent two engines burn through 300 kg.
Total fuel for a 4 h
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Would it be better to use an electric catapult? Similar to what the aircraft carriers use.
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Unlike a rocket, a plane doesn't have to carry its reaction mass around, so they aren't punished nearly as much for dead weight. A rocket needs to get out of the atmosphere ASAP so it can start accelerating and quit losing energy to gravity, so a booster is very important, as is dropping its weight when it's done.
Aircraft have much easier constraints. Wings lose much less energy to gravity.
Jets are pretty good in their power delivery. They aren't great from a dead stop, but they quickly pick up as the pl
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The problem with the hybrid airplane is that the cost is spectacular. The cost of the motor and speed controller is relatively negligible, but the battery is quite expensive. You can make it cheaper by making it smaller, but that makes it less useful as well. A big part of the appeal of the electric airplane is that it eliminates some of the most costly aspects of aviation. The fuel is a huge expense, engine maintenance is a huge expense and it occurs every so many hours "need it or not" to make sure you do
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I was more thinking in the line of mounting the plane on a cart that would help accelerating and power the propellers during take-off. The cart would then remain and roll out on the runway, and would automatically or by remote control get out of the way for the next aircraft.
This is a comparable to the launching rail that is used in Rwanda by the Zipline delivery drones.
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Solid state batteries needed! (Score:3)
To get serious about electric air planes then they are going to need solid state batteries. There is a lot less that can go wrong with them and they can charge faster. I'm glad that electric air planes are getting the R&D they deserve but obviously, it is battery development that is the key to success.
On a side note, a plane with solid state batteries would be much safer in the event of a crash landing because the most likely thing to kill you in that event is smoke inhalation from burning fuel rather than the impact itself. This may seem strange but there is a high chance of getting knocked unconscious in the impact which removes your ability to escape a smoke filled cabin.
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What if they could make it so that you could drop the battery without your aerodynamics and balance going completely bonkers? It'd be one heck of a way to improve glide time.
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What if they could make it so that you could drop the battery
Here's the thing, in normal airplanes, everything is filled with fuel, including the wings. To do the same to with batteries means they can't be easily removed. I suspect that solid state batteries will double as structural elements.
IF they get flying, what costs for passengers ? (Score:2)
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Wait and see indeed - won't know until we see one in service.
However, one thing that an electric airplane has got going for it over fossil fuel is substantially lower operating cost. The cost ($/passenger/km) for the necessary electricity is substantially lower than jet fuel. (Like the differential for EV cars vs ICEs, except jet fuel is even more expensive.) An electric motor requires practically zero maintenance, and has
someone please tell Representative MTG (Score:2, Troll)
as in Marjorie Tayloe Green. Hopefully, she'll keel over on the spot.
She loves to make fun of everything electric (windmills, cars, solar, and the rest) while being totally ignorant about the whole subject.
She recently made a lot of jokes about the passengers having to pedal like mad on stationary cycles in order to keep the plane in the air. Yes, she is a moron.
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If MGT wasn't in a position to vote on legislation that affects us all, this would be a troll otherwise +5 insightful
molten salt micro-reactor (Score:2)
https://alphatechresearchcorp.... [alphatechr...chcorp.com] is developing micro-reactors using molten salt. If anything goes wrong they turn into a block of concrete, effectively. I'm curious if something like this could be used with aviation. It'd give plenty of electricity, and could fit in a larger jet.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft
Not new... (Score:3)
Harbour Air in Vancouver, Canada has been testing their eBeaver seaplane since 2019, and it is working with Transport Canada & the FAA in the US for getting type certification for this plane. It is a modified de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver with its radial engine with an electric one. There is precedent for this, as there is a certified type Beaver which has had its engine replaced with a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 turboprop engine creating the Turbo Beaver. Thus a fair bit of work has already been done towards certifying a DHC-2 Beaver with a different engine and help speed the process of getting its type cert.
Re:Not new... except the airframe (Score:2)
What's new here is the airframe, and that they are banking on significant battery improvements to make it usable. The Beaver [wikipedia.org] has been out of production for 55 years, which really limits the ability to scale.
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It may be out of current production, but Viking Air bought all the type certs for the de Havilland Canada planes from Bombardier and has actually been producing new parts for them. They are also tooling up to restart production of the Beaver due to demand, as well as an updated airframe version. Unfortunately, all of this has been pushed back by the plague, so who knows when/if they will start production of new Beavers.
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I believe there is, as there has been a steady production of spare parts for the Beaver by Bombardier but I don't know if that includes the full airframe or just parts that tend to wear and/or break. But I would think that they probably have full tooling since creating all of that equipment from scratch would be very expensive, and, I think, prohibitive. The fact that they are putting the DHC-6 Twin Otter, and the Beaver back into production as well as a new CL-515 firefighting water bomber would lead me to
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first? (Score:2)
https://electrek.co/2022/08/25/harbour-air-first-point-to-point-test-flight-electric-plane/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-electric-seaplane-test-flights-1.5884479
https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2021EMLI0068-002069
Significant millstone (Score:2)
Yeah, a significant millstone. Wake me when I can buy a ticket and bring luggage.
Sea plane converted to electric ... (Score:2)
Here is a sea plane that operates as an air taxi [harbourair.com] that was converted to electric, and completed the test flight successfully back in August.
The selling point is that the passenger does not have to wait for a ferry, with all the hassle around that ...
Show me the Energy Budget ... (Score:1)
Hmmm ... An 8-minute Flight ...
How long can the Plane Fly with current Battery Technology ?
And how long does it take to 'refuel' ?
-- kjh
I misread the title and thought it said... (Score:2)
"An All-Passenger Electric Plane Completed Its First Test Flight".
I was trying to figure out how they divided up the various duties - flight attendant, steward, pilot, etc...
"Carbon pollution free" electricity? (Score:2)
So, where does the electrical power come from? Wind, solar or nuclear?
Not gonna happen (Score:2)
Batteries are great for a great number of things. Planes are not one of those things.
Planes are things where we count the weight separately at the start and at the end, because it makes that much of a difference. We weight every tiny thing that goes into them and scrutinize it in extreme detail to see if we can lighten it in any way. Every component that weighs a plane down needs to have the best bang for it's buck.
Batteries just don't fit this model. Not even the absolute pinacle of *theoretical* batte