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First test flight of largest all-electric aircraft used just $5 of electricity (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I really hope this will catch on for once, it could be a great solution for all those people who insist they have to do domestic flights... (in countries like Germany which aren't that big comparatively speaking)

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  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

    Yeah unfortunately this is only viable for extremely short flights 100-200 miles as the article says. Batteries are just too heavy and planes needs too much power for anything more.

    These would be the perfect private jet for the ultra rich who take a jet to work a few minutes away, or to go shopping, but for commercial flights they’re basically not an option until we have a huge breakthrough in battery tech. We need the mythical “coming next year” for the last 20 years “solid state batteries”.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago

    Yeah that's it. It's not a matter of "catching on", it's a matter of better battery tech emerging which is more affordable.

    Personally I think high speed rail is a better bet. All the tech already exists and the weight of the batteries is less problematic.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    It looks great for small commercial flights between islands and such, even just for urgent freight, fuel has more complicated logistics and avgas has lead in it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    Yep definitely. I have to question the $5 of electricity claim though. $5 of electricity would barely even get an electric car that far. What size are the batteries? Where did they get this incredibly cheap power to where it can output over a megawatt of power?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    As I said in another comment, this is a step towards making a more efficient hybrid plane for trips under 500 miles, of which about 4 million are made per year in the U.S. alone. Having enough battery power to take off efficiently makes those trips a lot more economical. On longer flights, fuel for takeoff is a lot smaller portion of the overall costs and doesn't matter as much. Except for all the fossil fuel burned, of course.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    Yeah and I agree, that’s a great step that hopefully will come to fruition soon enough. I’m just saying that people need to temper their expectations because full electric passenger flights, especially long haul, are simply not possible with existing battery technology, not even close.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    People who insist on domestic flights in Germany are really critiquing the train network which is vast, but way to slow and the on time performance is terrible. If they would fix the trains there would be much less call for flights.

    Better than the US is not an endorsement.

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