EV aircraft flies and what a dog it is!

T. A. Gardner

T. A. Gardner

Serial Thread Killer
Startup Eviation just flew their first battery powered plane, Alice, on a test flight. What a dog compared to conventionally powered planes it is.

It has 4 tons of batteries powering it, can haul a maximum load of 2,600 lbs. or 9 passengers 250 miles at a speed of about 250 knots. A 737-800 carries 170 to 190 passengers or about 52,000 lbs. of cargo at a speed of about 500 to 550 knots and 4 tons of fuel will allow it to fly about 500 miles.

Alice is quiet however... :rolleyes:
 
T. A. Gardner said:
Startup Eviation just flew their first battery powered plane, Alice, on a test flight. What a dog compared to conventionally powered planes it is.

It has 4 tons of batteries powering it, can haul a maximum load of 2,600 lbs. or 9 passengers 250 miles at a speed of about 250 knots. A 737-800 carries 170 to 190 passengers or about 52,000 lbs. of cargo at a speed of about 500 to 550 knots and 4 tons of fuel will allow it to fly about 500 miles.

Alice is quiet however... :rolleyes:
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The Wright Brothers' first gasoline powered plane left room for improvement as well,
but it was a start.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
The Wright Brothers' first gasoline powered plane left room for improvement as well,
but it was a start.
Click to expand...
The problem with an EV aircraft is the batteries are heavy and will always be heavy. Batteries are low density power sources and that means you are spending all the aircraft's weight carrying capacity on them rather than on passengers and cargo. Also, battery driven aircraft are limited to propeller driven engines meaning at best they could manage maybe 500 mph at very short range. The result is that an EV aircraft is short ranged, low speed, and can't carry much in terms of cargo or passengers.

The problem with your analogy is that it is a historical fallacy. The design of aircraft today is well advanced and the aerodynamics of flight are not what we're discussing here. What is being discussed, is propulsion. An EV aircraft, while possible as shown by the Alice, is grossly inefficient compared to conventional jet and ICE engine aircraft. Their power density and power to weight ratio is so low as to make them impractical.

The Alice carries just 9 passengers or 2,600 lbs. of cargo 250 miles on a 4 ton battery. A 737-800 demolishes those figures as I showed. In fact, any ICE or jet engine aircraft demolishes them. The Alice is only viable if the customer is buying it as an environmental status symbol. Even hard core greentards like John Kerry or Al Gore are going to fly their private JETs to Europe for a confab simply because something like the Alice can't fly that far.
 
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Nobody is advocating the replacement of the global jet fleet with electric airplanes quite yet.

What might be accomplished further down the road, too late for any of us to see it,
cannot happen without making the primitive early efforts first.

Electric aircraft could turn out to be the next hydrogen inflated dirigibles, essentially not practical,
or they could turn out to be something we can't imagine now.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
The problem with an EV aircraft is the batteries are heavy and will always be heavy. Batteries are low density power sources and that means you are spending all the aircraft's weight carrying capacity on them rather than on passengers and cargo. Also, battery driven aircraft are limited to propeller driven engines meaning at best they could manage maybe 500 mph at very short range. The result is that an EV aircraft is short ranged, low speed, and can't carry much in terms of cargo or passengers.
Click to expand...
 
NiftyNiblick said:
Nobody is advocating the replacement of the global jet fleet with electric airplanes quite yet.
Click to expand...

Nobody ever will. Batteries just won't cut it.
NiftyNiblick said:
What might be accomplished further down the road, too late for any of us to see it,
cannot happen without making the primitive early efforts first.
Click to expand...

There's a limit to battery capacity and we're pretty much at it. Yes, incremental improvements can still be made but you will NEVER get more than about 3-ish volts out of a single battery cell. That is the limit of chemistry as the periodic table shows.
NiftyNiblick said:
Electric aircraft could turn out to be the next hydrogen inflated dirigibles, essentially not practical,
or they could turn out to be something we can't imagine now.
Click to expand...

Lighter than air ships have possibilities when you use helium, but they too are limited in speed and also more by weather.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
Nobody ever will. Batteries just won't cut it.


There's a limit to battery capacity and we're pretty much at it. Yes, incremental improvements can still be made but you will NEVER get more than about 3-ish volts out of a single battery cell. That is the limit of chemistry as the periodic table shows.


Lighter than air ships have possibilities when you use helium, but they too are limited in speed and also more by weather.
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I got to ride on a Goodyer blimp when I was a young boy.

As for methods of creating and / or storing electricity,
I will not attempt to image what could be possible in the future.

In any case, I don't see what harm comes from looking into and trying things.

I don't think electric automobiles are quite ready to take over yet,
but I don't dismiss the likelihood that they will be relatively soon.

They're practical for local travel right now.
For car trips, with charging away from home required, they have a way to go
 
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