The largest electric aircraft just flew [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#181

Post by Toutouxc » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:18 AM UTC

dyauspitr wrote: post #164

luma wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hybrid after the first 125 miles, total range 500 miles. Their problem is diversions - an incident at the destination airport may mean an passenger aircraft may need to land at an airport which could be a couple hundred miles away. The hybrid powerplant throws the fuel efficiency numbers off so goal is not to run it unless needed, but they could not get certification without it.

Unless they have a whole new airport and flying experience, I don’t think a lot of people are going to fly just 125 miles. That’s less than two hours of driving. It would be 2 hours of just airport shenanigans much less the flight itself.

> 125 miles … That’s less than two hours of driving.

I don’t know where you live or what you drive, but I just punched in a destination 200 km away as the crow flies, the Alps are in the way and I’m looking at five hours of driving.

Also, water.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#182

Post by giancarlostoro » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:19 AM UTC

luma wrote: post #87

alberth wrote: post #83

Is this EV or Hybrid? The founder seems to sneak in the word "hybrid", around 1m30 mark in the video below. https://youtu.be/nM86DBOqgPM?si=5unXLmPxk6M_kmuN&t=86 Note: not being negative, I just want to ensure I understand correctly since the title might imply something else. Update: confirmed, it does use aviation fuel. > "The airplane will also include a reserve-hybrid configuration, consisting of two turbo generat…

Hybrid after the first 125 miles, total range 500 miles. Their problem is diversions - an incident at the destination airport may mean an passenger aircraft may need to land at an airport which could be a couple hundred miles away. The hybrid powerplant throws the fuel efficiency numbers off so goal is not to run it unless needed, but they could not get certification without it.

Honestly, I'd feel better knowing it has a reserve system in case there's any issues, even if the batteries have more than enough power, beats having it and never using it, than needing it and suffering as a result.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#183

Post by dghlsakjg » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:21 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #120

dghlsakjg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: When they did the actual flight I did the math on the $5 worth of power claim, and it just doesn’t pencil out even at the lowest power rates in North America. Just to illustrate: at $.05 per kWh (which is less than half the price of electricity where they flew), you get 100kwh for $5. 100kw is what it takes to takeoff a 1200 pound Cessna. Probably about 75kw for an efficient cruise in that same plane. Still an i…

You can't convert between kWh and kW. 100 kWh = 6 MW for one minute... so there is plenty of power if the flight is short enough. They said the plane has 4 Tesla's worth of battery power, let's assume they are 80KWh packs then that's 320kWh that they could use for a short flight. That's a fair amount of juice, they definitely won't be flying long in a 25 ton aircraft without starting up the auxiliary motor but I have…

The specific claim from the company is that the entire 27 min flight was done with $5 worth of power using an all electric power system with a power output exceeding one megawatt.

https://www.heartaerospace.com/newsroom/heart-aerospace-comp...

I still think it is an amazing achievement. I just don’t see how they were able to get it done on $5 worth of power, or they just quoted the wrong price.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#184

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:26 AM UTC

Toutouxc wrote: post #179

werdnapk wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what do regular aircraft do when they run out of fuel? They require a forced landing. Aircraft fly with a buffer of fuel though to avoid such situations, so why can't an electric aircraft fly with a similar buffer on it's range? ie. Always fly less than the current charged range of the aircraft.

> Aircraft fly with a buffer of fuel though to avoid such situations, so why can't an electric aircraft fly with a similar buffer on it's range? Because the required buffer is HUGE and we’re at a point where electric planes barely have enough energy for the actual route. So they’re doing the sensible thing here, flying the actual route electrically and falling back to combustion if the plane needs to divert.

[deleted]

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#185

Post by 33MHz-i486 » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:30 AM UTC

MobiusHorizons wrote: post #151

infotainment wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cheap electric transportation can finally offset USA's lacking rail commutes I'm not sure how building an electric aircraft would help with this. Are people going to suddenly switch to commuting by plane? Fixing America's commute problem is primarily an urban planning one (ie, putting all the homes nowhere near anything) and not an insufficient-electric-aircraft one.

I think you could make a case for that, especially when landing in water. Quite a few dense urban areas people might need to get to have water nearby suitable for landing seaplanes. I think you would end up creating communities further from the urban areas dedicated to this mode of transport. It’s definitely not a simple or guaranteed idea, but it is actually feasible politically and technically.

seaplanes aren’t more broadly used because they don’t have a good safety profile.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#186

Post by aidenn0 » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:32 AM UTC

arijun wrote: post #52

The noise wouldn't be significantly lower during takeoff/landing, only during taxi, right? Good for workers on the tarmac, but doesn't get rid of the largest noise pollution issue.

Noise at takeoff depends on the propeller geometry a lot. A necessary (but not sufficient) requirement for a quieter takeoff would be lower propeller tip-speed.

One of the ways to achieve high thrust at low tip speed is to have larger total propeller surface. The best shot of the propellers is around 9s and these don't look like particularly large propeller blades, but there are 20 propeller blades compared to 8-12 that you might see on a 50-ish seat turboprop airliner.

But it's unlikely to ever be quiet to lift 20 tons into the air.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#187

Post by Toutouxc » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:32 AM UTC

class3shock wrote: post #155

Doing some math. Regional jets get somewhere around 45.9 seat miles per gallon (1). So 30 seats, going 125 miles would take around 80 gallons of jet fuel. This is likely low because all the jets listed are bigger and likely flying longer flights that are more efficient but just go with it. Jet fuel has a specific energy of 12 kwh/kg and a density of 6.7 lb/gal (2). So 80 gallons of jet fuel is 536 lb, or 243 kg, and…

As a rule of thumb, when you find yourself looking at an existing internal combustion vehicle and converting fossil fuel energies and efficiencies using battery gravimetric densities, you’re almost always at the “garbage in” stage of GIGO.

This plane isn’t a 737, it isn’t even a jet, it doesn’t run the motors the same way, the flight profiles are all different.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#188

Post by Toutouxc » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:37 AM UTC

_carbyau_ wrote: post #127

Waterluvian wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you imagine the (rather justified?) NIMBYism for all the airports required for commuter flight? If rail can’t be done, flight definitely won’t fly.

Curious, would electric flight be significantly quieter such that airport noise is significantly less of an issue? Or is the noise from turbulence through the air or something? I honestly would think they'd be minimising turbulence anyway for energy efficiency.

Somewhat quieter, but not by much. We’re talking about prop planes here, where the prop is the noisy part.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#189

Post by dingaling » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:38 AM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #173

I'm surprised by the struts supporting the wing; that saves weight (probably important here), but at the cost of drag. Wikipedia suggests a rule of thumb of 200mph being the break-even point for struts vs cantilever, and I would guess this plane is supposed to cruise faster than that. However, I didn't see the cruise speed listed anywhere; does someone know what they are targeting? On another note, other than the str…

The Shorts 360, very similar to this aircraft in size, weight and structural design with a strut-braced wing, cruised at 216kt ( 249mph ) for 400nm with 36 pax, three crew and fuel for 50nm diversion and 45 min hold.

Re: The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

#190

Post by aidenn0 » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:40 AM UTC

kirrent wrote: post #180

aidenn0 wrote: post #173

I'm surprised by the struts supporting the wing; that saves weight (probably important here), but at the cost of drag. Wikipedia suggests a rule of thumb of 200mph being the break-even point for struts vs cantilever, and I would guess this plane is supposed to cruise faster than that. However, I didn't see the cruise speed listed anywhere; does someone know what they are targeting? On another note, other than the str…

That sounds like the breakeven if you're holding wing geometry constant and want to compare cantilever weight cost to bracing drag cost. The real advantage is in allowing for thinner and higher aspect ratio wings like in the Boeing X-66 which was designed to fly considerably faster than 200mph and make fuel savings. I guess an additional advantage in this design is that the weight of the batteries is in the fuselage…

I'm terrible at estimating aspect ratios, but the plane in the video doesn't seem to be particularly high aspect ratio. Since they will be presumably holding less fuel, they could certainly be thinner though.

While poking around their website to try and find good still images from a top-down angle of their demonstrator, I did notice that there is no bracing in the concept images of the ES-30, for whatever that is worth.