The electric airplane is another myth. There is no known battery technology, or one on the horizon, that can provide a large enough power/weight to make them practical.
The investors are getting bilked.
The investors are getting bilked.
Small aircraft are already there. I'm looking into starting my pilots license this year, the local flight school recently acquired an Elektra Trainer [1], that apparently has 2.5 hours worth of flight time [2].
Big transoceanic widebodies obviously will be fossil fuel based for a long time to come, but I think a lot of the GA market and bush pilot/island hoppers can and will be done by electric planes sooner than later - alone because the noise and lead emissions are all but gone, and I think that in a few years, when experiences on failure modes are a bit richer, electric planes will also be cheaper to maintain - similar to cars, there are less parts involved in the first place that can break down.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektra_Trainer
[2] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/elektrisch-fliegen-in-l...
Retrofitting electrical flight to a 1950s airframe will be, in the long run, not a great use of the technology.
Those planes were designed around having a single heavy powerplant up front driving the propeller, and fuel largely distributed along the center of gravity (in the wings) so as not to adversely alter flight characteristics over the trip. The electrified Beaver stores its batteries in the fuselage; of course there is no change in mass/CG over the flight with electric, but all that fuel tank space in the wings is going to waste. The fact that these are floatplanes make charging/battery replacement tasks at the dock challenging and restrict options.
A clean sheet design, with multiple distributed smaller motors and more options for battery placement, will be a significant improvement.
Makes me wonder about their design tradeoffs.
Demonstrated range of over 300 nautical miles. Significantly higher reliability than helicopters previously used for the same task, and much cheaper.
It sounds ridiculous but I’ve been in aircraft that take off while attached to a cable thousands of feet in length — a winch launched glider!
Edit: although maybe there's a good idea: catapult or winch launch for electric aircraft would massively reduce the power and energy storage requirements to be carried onboard.
There are other issues - like you cannot abort a catapult in progress.
But yeah, much harder than a regular runway. Probably not economical.
By comparison glider launch wires are quite thin and light.
Strong disagree. Short range eVTOL craft will blow open the market for all kinds of use cases.
Size the battery for takeoff/climbing/go-around/diversion use-cases. Size the fossil-fuel engine for cruising power, which should improve efficiency. During takeoff and climbing power, the two motors work together. During cruise and descent, the electric motor regenerates the battery. I imagine that for general aviation, you would maintain one propshaft and not even bother with a clutch pack, since the gas engine is needed in all phases of flight, and freewheeling an electric motor is simple. Perhaps have the fossil-fuel engine keyed to the shaft with a shearing pin, so that if the engine seizes, the electric motor still turns the prop.
This has the advantage that you now have two independent motors, which could eventually help with ETOPS rating, but would initially improve safety/reliability for general aviation.
Yes, you are still fossil-fuel dependent, but you burn much less of it, first by offsetting some takeoff energy to the electrical grid, and secondly by reducing reserve power in the fossil fuel engine to improve efficiency.
> There is no known battery technology, or one on the horizon,
The planes and batteries are getting there.
VC will invest in snake oil if they think they'll get out at a profit.
/j
..practical to replace commercial airliners, sure. There have been plenty of slow electric planes.
In the future, net-zero air travel can only be done by producing jet fuel in a carbon neutral way.