The electric airplane is another myth. There is no known battery technology, or one on the horizon, that can provide a large enough power/weight to make them practical.
> There is no known battery technology, or one on the horizon, that can provide a large enough power/weight to make them practical.
Small aircraft are already there. I'm looking into starting my pilots license this year, the local flight school recently acquired an Elektra Trainer [1], that apparently has 2.5 hours worth of flight time [2].
Big transoceanic widebodies obviously will be fossil fuel based for a long time to come, but I think a lot of the GA market and bush pilot/island hoppers can and will be done by electric planes sooner than later - alone because the noise and lead emissions are all but gone, and I think that in a few years, when experiences on failure modes are a bit richer, electric planes will also be cheaper to maintain - similar to cars, there are less parts involved in the first place that can break down.
It is, because it's easier to get started with certification and experience in ultralights than in full-size planes. It won't be long until we see bush capable Cessnas, I think.
They use electric seaplanes at Harbour Air for regional flights across the Georgia Strait between Vancouver, Seattle, and Victoria. Electric makes a lot of sense for short-range flights.
No, the eBeaver has never flown a commercial flight. Harbour Air is aiming for certification in 2026. Additionally, it only holds four passengers and is more a proof of concept than anything else. It is a cool effort but battery technology needs to come a long way first.
Firstly: I'm a fan of Harbour Air's work and their electrification. Have flown that airline.
Retrofitting electrical flight to a 1950s airframe will be, in the long run, not a great use of the technology.
Those planes were designed around having a single heavy powerplant up front driving the propeller, and fuel largely distributed along the center of gravity (in the wings) so as not to adversely alter flight characteristics over the trip. The electrified Beaver stores its batteries in the fuselage; of course there is no change in mass/CG over the flight with electric, but all that fuel tank space in the wings is going to waste. The fact that these are floatplanes make charging/battery replacement tasks at the dock challenging and restrict options.
A clean sheet design, with multiple distributed smaller motors and more options for battery placement, will be a significant improvement.
Edit: although maybe there's a good idea: catapult or winch launch for electric aircraft would massively reduce the power and energy storage requirements to be carried onboard.
Being constrained to a ship makes things harder though. If it was simply very long (runway length), I reckon an abort would be fine. There are probably a lot of different ways to do it.
But yeah, much harder than a regular runway. Probably not economical.
Considering how thick fast charging cables for cars are, I don't think it will fly, literally. We could make the cables thinner with high enough voltage I guess. But then we would actually need two wires with proper separation, because unlike with trains, you obviously can't use the ground for the return path. Loose high voltage wires may be a safety problem too.
By comparison glider launch wires are quite thin and light.
They're great for trainers. Short hops with immediate control, low maintenance and operating cost, and you can save the magneto/ignition/etc workload for a different lesson series.
So, make electric airplanes the initial license, reduce the amount of hours to get it, and have an entire course on monomotors before pilots can deal with combustion airplanes.
Exactly. Flying the airplane is the first 90% of flying, managing the engine is the other 90%. So it helps to set one aside while you work on the other.
I feel there is an unaddressed market for a hybrid gas/electric or diesel/electric powerplant.
Size the battery for takeoff/climbing/go-around/diversion use-cases. Size the fossil-fuel engine for cruising power, which should improve efficiency. During takeoff and climbing power, the two motors work together. During cruise and descent, the electric motor regenerates the battery. I imagine that for general aviation, you would maintain one propshaft and not even bother with a clutch pack, since the gas engine is needed in all phases of flight, and freewheeling an electric motor is simple. Perhaps have the fossil-fuel engine keyed to the shaft with a shearing pin, so that if the engine seizes, the electric motor still turns the prop.
This has the advantage that you now have two independent motors, which could eventually help with ETOPS rating, but would initially improve safety/reliability for general aviation.
Yes, you are still fossil-fuel dependent, but you burn much less of it, first by offsetting some takeoff energy to the electrical grid, and secondly by reducing reserve power in the fossil fuel engine to improve efficiency.
Really? The Beta Alia CX300 just completed a coast to coast journey (Vermont - Santa Monica). Range of about 338 miles using 200kwh of completely unremarkable ~150wh/kg batteries. With 500wh/kg batteries being announced from multiple manufacturers now, that range should improve pretty quickly.
> There is no known battery technology, or one on the horizon,
The investors are getting bilked.