211–220 of 387 posts
Unfortunately as the crow flies that seems to be closer to 800 miles than 125.
I'm in London and the airport itself is already 60 miles away.
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Yes, it doesn't even make sense to make electric trucks, let alone airplanes. Or they'd be mostly battery.
I read new truck sales in China are about 30% electric and climbing. Apparently it does make sense for them
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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.
Could be useful for hub and spoke type systems, where you fly from a smaller city to the main hub, and catch a connection from there. Even then there are lots of flights in Europe that are between cities less than 1 hour apart. This idea generally makes more sense in Europe than the US, I think.
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Do current aircraft have a backup in-case their fuel tanks run dry?
Current aircraft have * MULTIPLE HOURS* of fuel tanks. Compared to dozens of minutes of battery that this thing has.
The interior of the plane is clearly designed by an engineer. They stripped everything down to save weight, passenger comfort be dammed. The seats don't even look comfortable. They need to hire an actual designer, if the plane weighs 0.5% more but has actual human usability that's worth it.
BUT, where current aircraft are usually constrained on size, cramming as many passengers as possible into the cabin is the goal.
Here, space will be less of an issue than weight. So cabins can offer more room between seats minimalist seats.
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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.
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…
Check jet engine weight and include in the calculation. One weights 2200-3700 lbs according to same source that quotes 45.9 seat miles per gallon. Vs 125 pounds for electric engine.