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Electric aircraft set to take flight by 2026 under new agreements

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Re: Electric aircraft set to take flight by 2026 under new agreements

#51

Wendover Productions (who else?!) recently released a video[1] on the future of electric planes. Quite a lot of information in there! [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH4b3sAs-l8

LNA, an aviation industry newsletter, recently came to a very different conclusion [1]. The biggest difference to Wendover Productions's numbers is a hugely higher estimate in the cost of replacing the battery every 5-10 years due to battery degradation. [1] https://leehamnews.com/2021/07/01/the-true-cost-of-electric-...

Thank you for bringing up this other conclusion. I still side with Wendover overall.

Even if batteries have to be replaced that often now, the technology will continue to improve, becoming both cheaper and more reliable.

Computers used to be the size of rooms and break due to literal insects in them.

Re: Electric aircraft set to take flight by 2026 under new agreements

#52
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can dump batteries too

That could be more of a problem. Regardless of the height, dumping a battery means a projectile falling, which could injure someone or cause property damage. If fuel is dumped high enough, it pretty much evaporates and doesn't fall to the ground. If the plane is low when it dumps fuel, it can hit the ground and bystanders; but, it's not going do much, if any damage. (Assuming it doesn't hit someones barbecue or a smo…

Don't forget that lithium batteries tend to burst into flames if you hit them hard enough. Dumping your batteries can too easily become a bombing run.

Also, Jet-A doesn't burst into flames like gasoline. Even if you soak an area with it, you don't have a firestorm just waiting to blow up.

Re: Electric aircraft set to take flight by 2026 under new agreements

#53
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains take a lot more time, even HSR. I'm going to Madrid in the near future and I don't think I'll take a train, it's at least 6+ hours, and most of it is HSR.

How long is the flight in comparison? And have you factored in the airport time into that? I was looking at taking the Eurostar from London to Amsterdam, and a friend was dismissing it as it took 4 hours where as the flight is ~45 mins. Except its not, the flight its self maybe 45 mins, but you have to get to heathrow (which is further away than St Pancreas) plus get there an hour early. Then we would have to deal wi…

I don't know, but my city airport is small, so it's pretty much arriving and boarding. Now barajas is another history but I doub't ill be there for much more than 30 mins.

Re: Electric aircraft set to take flight by 2026 under new agreements

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Nobody's meeting those requirements just yet. Someone is. What is very interesting about Harbour Air's approach is that they are not creating new aircraft but rather retrofitting electric propulsion onto their existing fleet. This is not an electric engine filling a niche application. Rather, this is electric replacing combustion engines on very longstanding commercial routes. https://www.harbourair.com/harbour-air…

The eBeaver is about as relevant to conventional air travel as the existence of electric milk floats and forklifts was to ground transport for the past 50 years.

I take it that you have never been to Alaska. Or BC. Or Washington. Or anywhere else with more trees than people. Without bushplanes the entire resource extraction industry would grind to a halt. The conversion of a Beaver to electric follows on the past turbo-beaver conversion. It matters and is being watched by the industry.

Re: Electric aircraft set to take flight by 2026 under new agreements

#55

Interesting that the routes they name are 119 and 78 miles. Kinda surprised Americans have flights so short. But then again the aircraft might beat CAFE for a vehicle with a single driver in it, plus aircraft usually carry a load of cargo too, as the passengers pay for the plane to go somewhere and the cargo is the profit. Wonder how much cargo this elegy plane can carry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in…

It's all connecting to bigger flights. Plus 78-119 miles means either paying a lot of money for a cab, paying gas & parking fees for the duration of your trip at the bigger airport, or asking a friend/family member very nicely to take that trip to drop you off/pick you up. The smaller cities in question for these routes aren't going to have any sort of usable bus service for making a flight on time. To answer your ca…

And it’s usually much nicer checking in at the smaller regional airports. Less chaotic and shorter lines.

Downside is that the services aren’t usually nearly as good.

Re: Electric aircraft set to take flight by 2026 under new agreements

#56
post #24

They talk about regional flight. Does anyone have any sign that battery-powered planes carrying a hundred people will cross the Atlantic, Pacific, or the U.S.? The physics in Tom Murphy's textbook https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2021/03/textbook-debut suggests it's impossible. I've talked to people at electric plane companies who have offered no hope. I originally thought since we engineered from the Wright brothers to 74…

I don't have such a sign, but 100 passengers is still smaller than what current jets do, so it might be possible.

It would be a radically more efficient design than what we currently have, though.

Before we can even think of long-range flights, let's consider mid-range:

A 737-300 has a range of ca. 4000km from 20,000l of fuel. But that's not flying with full tanks all the time. It has a payload capacity of 17t (on top of passengers, I think) and carries up to 149 passengers.

If we cut the payload to 10t and passengers to 100, our "comparable" electric plane has 10t free payload for batteries (3t for the 50 passengers and 7t from the reduced payload). If we, generously, assume that we can add another 10t as "structural batteries" (basically, building the airframe out of batteries, because, why not, but also smaller and lighter engines), we end up with maybe a total capacity of 40t for our batteries (assuming 1kg/l for the jet fuel). We need the energy for a mid-range flight, say 1000km. That would be about 5000l of kerosene, in a 737 (not completely true due to weight loss during the flight). Fortunately, our electric propulsion is probably much more efficient (thermally) than a turbojet, so we might only need about 2/3 of the same energy. That puts us, very roughly, to the equivalent of 3.333l of kerosene, or about 86GJ. Hence our battery would have to offer 3.6MJ/kg.

This is inside the theoretical realm of a zinc-air battery. So with this very rough calculation it does not seem to be impossible to achieve mid-range battery electric flight. And this usually means it is going to happen whenever it is economically sensible.

For long-range flight, though, we would need even better batteries. Like, at least 4 times better. This is not on the horizon, currently.

Re: Electric aircraft set to take flight by 2026 under new agreements

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The eBeaver is about as relevant to conventional air travel as the existence of electric milk floats and forklifts was to ground transport for the past 50 years.

I take it that you have never been to Alaska. Or BC. Or Washington. Or anywhere else with more trees than people. Without bushplanes the entire resource extraction industry would grind to a halt. The conversion of a Beaver to electric follows on the past turbo-beaver conversion. It matters and is being watched by the industry.

Still has a ways to go. The eBeaver range is dramatically less.

Re: Electric aircraft set to take flight by 2026 under new agreements

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, lithium batteries are explosive. If anything, the fire hazard is probably worse. https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/electric-vehicle-bat...

Yea, they can drop fuel if they know there will be a problem.

vs. ejecting batteries turns the aircraft into a bomber. The Air Force drop fuel tanks from some aircraft but I have no idea how much trouble they get into for doing that. [1][2]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZfjyVbcJDI [video]

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXEyETZU8ag [video]

Re: Electric aircraft set to take flight by 2026 under new agreements

#59
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long is the flight in comparison? And have you factored in the airport time into that? I was looking at taking the Eurostar from London to Amsterdam, and a friend was dismissing it as it took 4 hours where as the flight is ~45 mins. Except its not, the flight its self maybe 45 mins, but you have to get to heathrow (which is further away than St Pancreas) plus get there an hour early. Then we would have to deal wi…

It also depends on train stations being accidentally close to where you depart/arrive. Most people don't live closer to a large train station then to an airport, I'd think.

Large train stations are far more common than large airports in Europe, so you got this the wrong way around.

Re: Electric aircraft set to take flight by 2026 under new agreements

#60
I was professionally close with an engineer who used to work on a (rapidly dwindling headcount) team responsible for the programs and related QA for mission critical flight safety systems. Think one of the big manufacturers.

The eng dealt with:

The standard was scripts with mutable variables such as `G == , B == , C == , redefine G as something else later` responsible for the processes around pretty critical airplane innards.

QA down to 1 or 2 headcount, and those 1 or 2 also doing the above program writing.

Zero hand-off once leaving the job on the mission critical QA the eng was responsible for, not for lack of effort on the engs part. Managers not aware the eng was leaving until day-of.

I could go on and on, but the point: I'm not sure how I feel about the safety of airplane travel after the above, but at least the engines were internal combustion so somewhat tied to physics vs. programming logic. A future with electric airplanes scare me a bit though. The software in them is aggressively, poorly done. I know airplanes are designed w/ fail-safes on the fail-safes and that eng had their own limited view of a complex system. But, it was bad.

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