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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 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 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.
Huh. I kind of thought that batteries had comprehensively won in this market, tbh. I still can't quite get used to the electric buses. A 20 tonne double-decker bus should sound like it might explode at any moment; it is unnatural for them to move around more or less silently.
Is it nice if the bus can do a driver's entire shift without a recharge? Sure! But if it can't, you just design the route so that the driver can switch busses and buy another bus. That means the technology problem is now a money problem.
Busses are also already quite heavy, so battery weight doesn't affect them as much as it might in a small car.
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.
I thought they might make sense for trainer aircraft that flight schools would use.
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.
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!
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.
VC will invest in snake oil if they think they'll get out at a profit.
Huh. I kind of thought that batteries had comprehensively won in this market, tbh. I still can't quite get used to the electric buses. A 20 tonne double-decker bus should sound like it might explode at any moment; it is unnatural for them to move around more or less silently.
Batteries have won this so hard (if you ignore CNG busses, which have existed forever and are "almost as good as hydrogen could be") - because even when they hadn't won it, you just needed more busses. Is it nice if the bus can do a driver's entire shift without a recharge? Sure! But if it can't, you just design the route so that the driver can switch busses and buy another bus. That means the technology problem is n…
Oof, that's a huge 'just' in many cases.
That said, current electric buses have sufficient range that this mostly isn't an issue. The unnervingly silent double-deckers I mention have a claimed range of 320km, which, at least here, is sufficient.
The big problem with Dublin's electric buses, ridiculously, was that the operator was late in applying for planning permission for the substations required to charge them. With the result that for about a year, there were about a hundred of them stored and unusable.
Transit agencies don't have the technical expertise to distinguish truth from lies in cleantech marketing. They aren't the only ones, see the over-inflated valuations of both Nikola and Tesla as two (very different) stories of companies successfully lying to investors and the general public about the magical capabilities of their novel transportation platforms.
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.
Silly idea, but if the power is needed for takeoff then the aircraft could be plugged in with a cable up until it reaches cruising altitude. 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.