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First test flight of largest all-electric aircraft used just $5 of electricity (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 47 points 1 month ago (15 children)

Literally the first sentence:

The first flight of the largest battery-electric aircraft to take to the skies lasted nearly half an hour while costing just $5 of electricity.

Can your Porsche 914 fly for half an hour on $5 of fuel ?

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  • [–] 57 points 1 month ago (7 children)

    Off a cliff yeah

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  • [–] 22 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    It would have to be a very high cliff.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Anyone know the terminal velocity of a falling Porsche 914? lol

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    The terminal velocity of a penny is at least 40 km/h. A Porsche would be much higher. Assuming the Porsche fell that slowly and reached terminal velocity instantly, the cliff would have to be 20 km high for the Porsche to fall for 30 minutes. Given Mt. Everest is just under 9 km high, you would need more than 2 Mt. Everests of height for your cliff to make this happen.

    Based on all that, the terminal velocity of a Porsche is irrelevant.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    If humans can hang glide I don't see why we couldn't use those aerodynamic principles to try to glide a car hooked up to glider wings. It's a real engineering challenge, but I feel like it would be possible to get some distance in a scenario where a car uses its wheels to go fast, drives off a cliff, deploys some kind of glider wings (or drive with the glider wings timed out to where the car gets to the cliff edge right at the point where the wings plus updraft provide enough lift) to get the vehicle to glide a substantial distance.

    Seems horribly dangerous but not impossible.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    I can fly a glider for half an hour for $0 in fuel or electricity

    In the right conditions I can fly a Cessna 150 for $5 in fuel. Just have to shop around the whole country for cheapest fuel and best flight cknditions. So exactly like they did

    These guys have the cheapest electricity in the country considering they advertise 1MW power output that apparently only ends up coating $5 over 27 minutes

    EVs make a lot of sense. This plane does not, nor does any currently proposed design for an all-electric plane

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

    My 1975 was tuned for distance. When I drove it from Key Largo to Seattle, it did 35mpg average over the 3500 miles I drove. That car was lost in an accident, sadly.

    25 miles per gallon. 30 minutes would be 12.5 miles on half a gallon.

    My current one does about 25-30 mpg. It weighs 1950 pounds. So, yes. It can comfortably do half an hour on one gallon or so and have fuel left to get me to a refill.

    They have flat 4 two liter VW engines. Extremely efficient if tuned correctly. One top of that, there is a direct 1 to 1 drop-in electric kit for these. When my current engine dies, I have an electric kit I'll put into it to make it an 914E.

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  • [–] -5 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Point to me in your quote where it talks about distance.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    LOL.

    "ErRrR pOiNt tO Me iN yOuR..,."

    Let me spell it out for you.

    The achievement being reported is that the plane performed a 30 minute flight. The implied details being that it took off, flew around in circles, and landed again at the same air port.

    The distance the plane traveled is not the achievement and it's not relevant.

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