CATL electric plane to support 2000 km (1200 miles) flight | Hacker News Reader

CATL electric plane to support 2000 km (1200 miles) flight

chinadaily.com.cn

29 pointsbelter22 comments

Can someone put the size of this plane into context? Their test plane was 4 tons, and this one with a 2000km range is 8 tons.

Would this be a small private jet?

A Google search shows the Embraer Phenom 100 (5 max passengers) has a max takeoff weight of ~5 tons, it's operating weight though is under 4 tons. So it seems reasonable that the smallest class of jets could hit that weight or close to it

If this is actually possible (not vaporware) then it means we're on the verge of replacing short regional "hop" flights with electric planes, leaving liquid fuel only for long range air transport.

Assuming at least a decent percentage of the electricity is low/zero carbon that would dramatically reduce CO2 emissions in air travel.

Of course all aviation is only a few percent of global CO2 emissions, so it's not the sector of most concern.

It is of military strategic concern though, oftentimes electricity is easier to source than a logistics chain of fuel.

>> that would dramatically reduce CO2 emissions in air travel

I'm actually more interested in reducing H2O emissions in air travel. The effect on cloud formations can be dramatic depending on conditions. Lower altitude aircraft don't affect this as much either.

That's a very good range within Europe. For America it's too short, as the USA is about 5000 km coast to coast.

That's only partially true if you are West of the Mississippi.

When I fly in and out of Cincinnati (where I live) I very often get routed through Chicago, which is under 300 miles away. This thing could make the trip three times between each recharge.

Cincinnati to New York is under 600 miles, still within this aircraft's range with lots of safety margin.

New York to Miami is a little over 1000 miles, which is probably too far with safety margin but close. That's a hugely popular route.

The big elephant in the room in terms of energy is that we have no energy problem. None. Zero. Free energy rains from the sky all day long and we have loads of wind, hydro, and nuclear power too. What we have is an energy storage problem. Fossil fuels are so popular because they are conveniently stored dispatchable energy, not because they are just "energy." If batteries get good enough we are done.

Good thing no one ever travels between the east coast and west coast

What a shame we have to retire every other plane when this one is adopted.

Even if this was the case, this is a (somewhat) solved problem. Look at how Formula E deals with limited range.

> The big elephant in the room in terms of energy is that we have no energy problem. None. Zero. [...] If batteries get good enough we are done.

But if batteries do get good enough, then we'll just use and waste more energy, and then we'll run out again, right? It's like how software bloat expands to match the available hardware resources. So maybe it's better to act as if things are scarce even if they're not.

Not every flight needs to cross the entire continent, just like not every drive requires a vehicle that gets 1000+ miles of range.

I'd bet the very vast majority of private flights in North America are less than 1200 miles.

But very, very few of the overall flights in the US are coast to coast non-stop. The average regional flight length (which is what something like this is targeting) in the US is 510 miles (~820 km)[1]. Overall average length of flight 941 miles (~1514 km)[2]:

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/742763/regional-carriers...

2. https://www.bts.gov/content/average-length-haul-domestic-fre...

What about everywhere else?

NYC - Philly 92 miles

NYC - DC 225 miles

NYC - Boston 215 miles

NYC - Portland, ME 325 miles

NYC - Pittsburgh 380 miles

NYC - Cleveland 470 miles

Cleveland - Chicago 350 miles

St. Louis - Chicago 320 miles

Houston - Dallas 240 miles

Houston - Austin 170 miles

Dallas - Austin 200 miles

Seattle - Portland 175 miles

Las Vegas - Los Angeles 280 miles

Las Vegas - San Francisco 600 miles

Las Vegas - San Diego 350 miles

You need to have about 50% more range than just the distance between airports (really, enough for two failed landings and a diversion to your most distant alternate) for the sake of having a safety margin, but I see what you're getting at.

Sounds reasonable. I removed the 7 that were over 600 miles.

Here are 7 more:

Boston - Pittsburgh 600 miles

Boston - Philadelphia 310 miles

Boston - Portland, ME 120 miles

Boston - Montreal 310 miles

Boston - DC 400 miles

Chicago - Nashville 475 miles

Atlanta - Nashville 250 miles

forget all these big-city connections. all the regional airports that are a 30m flight from these hubs will eat this kind of service right up. here in burlington, vt all our flights basically go through NYC anyhow, so a regular electric service from here to get to the big planes would be a huge win. there's plenty of airports like ours

LA to SF is one of the busiest air routes in the country.

It depends on how easy is to make batteries quick to swap. No need for ultra fast charging, they could just use a spare battery pack then the discharged one would go to the next plane after charging. If they find a way to say open a hatch and have the giant battery pack slide out to be replaced by a already fully recharged spare one, the stop could be as quick as changing horses to a carriage.

Doesn’t CATL already build 5C batteries? Then fast charging is really enough

Also possible, if that doesn't impact their life cycle significantly.

For anyone wondering, 2000km is 2 Megameters.

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