4 ms·

And yet Musk claims transcontinental range (NY-LA) would be possible with 400 Wh/kg batteries and mid-70% battery mass fraction. http://www.aviation.com/genera

• deleted 11y ago
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• schwarrrtz 11y ago
  A 70% battery mass fraction seems like a huge engineering challenge for an aircraft. I did a quick calculation of fuel mass fraction for the various Boeing 777 models [0] which ranged from ~13% to ~36%. Not saying it's impossible. Just hard. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#Specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#Specifications
  • lmm 11y ago
    I don't see that the engineering is hard. You could just take an existing design and replace most of the cabin with batteries. Building an economically viable mass-market aircraft with a 70% mass fraction might be another question, but if we're just talking about the engineering challenge of building it at all I don't think that's hard?
    • xgbi 11y ago
      And on top of that, "refueling" wouldn't cost the 250k figure that usually gets thrown in comments. I imagine it being more in the space of a 1-2k$ ; in which case the reduced passenger capacity might still be worth the premium in batteries.