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Are there denser ways to store electrical energy? Hydrogen fuel cells maybe? Seems like you need something much lighter than lithium-ion batteries to even begin to fill the role of passenger planes.
Here are some comments from Musk regarding electric aircraft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx3auTD85Fw
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coal power plants are roughly as efficient as an internal combustion engine (around 40%) and considering the power transmission losses, charging losses, electric engine inefficiencies and so on, any electric vehicle has worse overall efficiency than the equivalent gas vehicle. Electric vehicles only make sense from a pollution reduction point of view if the power is generated from renewable sources.
You would find it very hard, if not impossible, to run an ICE car at 40% efficient for normal driving. The same can not be said for a coal plant. So if the coal plant averages 35% and the ICE car averages 25%, that leaves some room for a coal-driven electric car to be more efficient. The conversion from grid power to mechanical power only needs to be over 70% efficient. If anything, that sounds easy to beat. Any coun…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coal power plants are roughly as efficient as an internal combustion engine (around 40%) and considering the power transmission losses, charging losses, electric engine inefficiencies and so on, any electric vehicle has worse overall efficiency than the equivalent gas vehicle. Electric vehicles only make sense from a pollution reduction point of view if the power is generated from renewable sources.
What's the power transmission loss from carrying crude to a refinery and then to Australia? The country is a net importer of oil, which means tankers burning foul stuff to carry it there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the power transmission loss from carrying crude to a refinery and then to Australia? The country is a net importer of oil, which means tankers burning foul stuff to carry it there.
Very true. Considering the whole supply chain for accurate comparison is complicated. Although I think my main point still stands : from an environmental perspective it's rather ineffective to have an electric car in a place where electricity comes from fossil fuels.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Then what would you call the person in the second seat, who isn't flying the plane? Instructor. These are designed pretty much exclusively as LSA trainers.
Touring motor gliders are often sold to couples that want to travel together. I've known people who own/fly: Dimona H36 and Taifun 17E. I have a family member who recently purchased a TL Sting S4 (a microlight) for similar purposes.
"Australia's first electric passenger plane takes to the skies" Well, one passenger, more like a sports plane than an airliner. Still very awesome :D
Very cool, right? I had a brain fart when I read the title on the front page thinking it was a self-driving electric plane, for some odd reason, and my heart skipped a beat. >It costs about $3 an hour to run the plane's engine, one-tenth the cost of a fuel engine. This sounds really great and at only €65,000 ($78196.30USD) it sounds like a steal that will scale nicely once it can carry the 5+ passengers it intends to…
That datasheet also says 700 cycles to 75% battery capacity, rather than the “about 1,000” of this article.
The $3/hour figure doesn’t seem to me to match the other numbers, either: 60kW for takeoff and 20kW for cruising; let’s ignore takeoff (it’s rounding error) and just call it 20kW. 20kWh for $3? At residential rates, 20kWh will cost more like $5. But I don’t know what commercial rates are for electricity; maybe they do get power that much cheaper than residential persons.
If you look up a video on youtube, you'll hear that the propeller still cause a lot of noise. So it's only more silent from the ground.
Are there denser ways to store electrical energy? Hydrogen fuel cells maybe? Seems like you need something much lighter than lithium-ion batteries to even begin to fill the role of passenger planes.
For all it's faults hydrocarbon fuels are really good at storing energy that's easily extractable.