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Norway's Plan for a Fleet of Electric Planes

149 points by HillaryBriss 8y ago

baybal2 8y ago
Take a note people - they are not dreaming of electric airlines, but thing more close to an air taxi with <200km range.
IronWolve 8y ago
Wouldnt electric planes be stuck to propeller drive? So limited to short haul. Thats why the 2 seater and local turbo prop planes would be the ones replaced. How can you make an electric Jet engine?
wefarrell 8y ago
I've often wondered how much energy would be saved by using some kind of catapult like the ones on aircraft carriers.
wpdev_63 8y ago
I am surprised nobody Larry Page's darling startup in electric planes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcpq6XYYoY4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcpq6XYYoY4 This is probably the closest thing we have right now and the foreseeable future.
Jedi72 8y ago
Has anyone ever considered detachable rockets for aircraft? I'm thinking SpaceX style boosters on the wings that could return to the airport. My understanding is that getting up to altitude requires lots of power but cruising/gliding, not as much. Reusable hydrogen boosters for take off and electric cruise sounds like an eco (not to mention fun) way to fly
Markoff 8y ago
i like how it's there not a single mention what it's financing their electric car or planes revolution - it's their oil resources - exporting them, effectively exporting pollution to countries not rich in oil, which can't afford subsidized switch to electric if they would be really ecological and not hypocrites they would stop making money from oil resources
- A2017U1 8y ago
  Norway's energy generation is 100% renewable, other countries are more than welcome to stop buying their oil and gas.
- Yetanfou 8y ago
  ...in which case there would be no market for short-haul electric airplanes which would mean that not only those Norse 'hypocrites' but also all those other, less wealthy countries would continue to use B737 and A319/320 for flights which could have been flown on those machines.
- clay_the_ripper 8y ago
  Well, they could be exporting oil AND not giving a crap about emissions which would be worse. At some level every entity, person and organization is a hypocrite in some way or another. So instead of pointing fingers, we should celebrate wins when we can.
- _ph_ 8y ago
  If Norway wouldn't sell the oil, someone else would do so. Currently, we need the oil to keep the economy and society working. But Norway uses the oil revenue to build a better future. Which everyone will benefit from. Like solar and wind are now available for everyone at economic prices, as an industrial scale market which allows for those low prices was created by many years of subsidies, when it didn't exist yet.
  - adventured 8y ago
    > But Norway uses the oil revenue to build a better future. Which everyone will benefit from. How do you get to that? Norway has extremely tight immigration policies. They hardly let anybody in. Their multi trillion dollar bounty will primarily benefit a few million people, while they export extreme per capita pollution; their per capita oil production is consistently among the top five or six globally. What spectacular technological breakthroughs and exports has Norway produced from their oil riches (in clean energy or otherwise)? I'm not aware of any. Contrast them with neighboring Sweden for example when it comes to technological innovation. Norway isn't that type of culture, they're much more akin to the insular, small kingdom petro states of the Middle East. You don't have to take my word for it, you can look at their primary industries, their nobel production, their scientific output and their technology invention.
davedx 8y ago
This is really great news. Shipping and aviation are two sectors that contribute huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, but have traditionally been left out of climate change action plans. I can't wait to take my first electric flight!
jillesvangurp 8y ago
Electric planes still have a few challenges ahead but basically technical progress seems to make short haul electrical flight feasible within the next decade. The reason this is being pursued by so many companies is that electric planes solve a lot of problems and represent an enormous disruption to the aviation industry. Modern air planes are very complex and expensive to operate and need a lot of maintenance. The cost of operating them is completely dominated by fuel cost, maintenance overhead, and expensive taxes and fees at airports related to noise and pollution. With electrical engines, all of this changes. They are light and simple and tend to have a long operational life with very low maintenance requirements. Recharging batteries is extremely cheap compared to burning tons of fuel (literally). Filling up an A321, which takes 24K liters of kerosene, will take you somewhere between 10 and 15K and gets you a range of around close to 8000 km. Most flights are much shorter than that meaning a lot of their weight and range is redundant. Also, you burn a lot of fuel on takeoffs and most planes need to get up high to get to an economical fuel burn rate to cruise. So you pay a huge price for getting all that weight up on every take off. Electrical planes don't need to get up that high and can cruise efficiently at both low and high altitudes. Once cruising, operating them as a glider is actually feasible as well because you can safely turn the engines off and on again (unthinkable with a jet).
- emptyfile 8y ago
  I really don't get it, if batteries are too expensive and bulky to get +500 km out of a car, what kind of range can you get with a plane?? Wouldn't it add a ridiculous amount of weight compared to kerosene.
  - Arnt 8y ago
    Read the article. Key quote. “A lot of the flights here are only 15 to 30 minutes.” Those planes don't go 500km. They go up, fly a short stretch over some complicated terrain, down. That's it. As to why: Kerosene isn't really an option any more. We have a climate problem, and in this generation, not some future generation.
    - 8y ago
yason 8y ago
It it still quite a lot of energy needed from batteries to maintain airspeed that produces sufficient lift. For short flights, a crossover between an airship and airplane might be an interesting idea. Economic and technical arguments might shoot it down but I'm just contemplating here. If there was a balloon attached to the body of the plane that would provide most of the lift the electric motor could just drive the propellers or motor fans for mostly forward propulsion. The overall speed could be slower because the wings wouldn't have to convert airspeed to so much lift, saving energy. On short haul flights the speed wouldn't be a big problem. The plane wouldn't thus rise up directly like airships: the balloon would only give most of the lift required for flight. Large but light wings would provide the remaining bit of lift starting from slow speeds and the plane could thus basically behave more like a normal plane, taking off and landing as usual albeit at significantly slower speeds, figuratively as if the plane was swimming in low gravity or, alternatively, 10x denser air. A balloon would obviously introduce a lot of aerodynamic drag but since the balloon would only help in lifting the plane it could be a bit smaller. We could also build it into an aerodynamic shape instead of a traditional balloon, and we could integrate parts of the helium filled balloon onto the plane itself. For example, we could give the small plane huge biplane wings made out of light-weight steel mesh with helium-filled pods inside. Edit: Similar idea in https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=188&v=oxotOEZCh8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=188&v=oxotOEZCh8... where 60% of the lift comes from the helium and 40% from aerodynamic forces.
PopeDotNinja 8y ago
Real Engineering did a cool video on electric planes a few weeks ago. https://youtu.be/VNvzZfsC13o https://youtu.be/VNvzZfsC13o

149 points by HillaryBriss 8y ago

Take a note people - they are not dreaming of electric airlines, but thing more close to an air taxi with <200km range.

Wouldnt electric planes be stuck to propeller drive? So limited to short haul. Thats why the 2 seater and local turbo prop planes would be the ones replaced. How can you make an electric Jet engine?

wefarrell 8y ago

I've often wondered how much energy would be saved by using some kind of catapult like the ones on aircraft carriers.

wpdev_63 8y ago

I am surprised nobody Larry Page's darling startup in electric planes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcpq6XYYoY4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcpq6XYYoY4 This is probably the closest thing we have right now and the foreseeable future.

Jedi72 8y ago

Has anyone ever considered detachable rockets for aircraft? I'm thinking SpaceX style boosters on the wings that could return to the airport. My understanding is that getting up to altitude requires lots of power but cruising/gliding, not as much. Reusable hydrogen boosters for take off and electric cruise sounds like an eco (not to mention fun) way to fly

Markoff 8y ago

i like how it's there not a single mention what it's financing their electric car or planes revolution - it's their oil resources - exporting them, effectively exporting pollution to countries not rich in oil, which can't afford subsidized switch to electric if they would be really ecological and not hypocrites they would stop making money from oil resources

A2017U1 8y ago
Norway's energy generation is 100% renewable, other countries are more than welcome to stop buying their oil and gas.
Yetanfou 8y ago
...in which case there would be no market for short-haul electric airplanes which would mean that not only those Norse 'hypocrites' but also all those other, less wealthy countries would continue to use B737 and A319/320 for flights which could have been flown on those machines.
clay_the_ripper 8y ago
Well, they could be exporting oil AND not giving a crap about emissions which would be worse. At some level every entity, person and organization is a hypocrite in some way or another. So instead of pointing fingers, we should celebrate wins when we can.
_ph_ 8y ago
If Norway wouldn't sell the oil, someone else would do so. Currently, we need the oil to keep the economy and society working. But Norway uses the oil revenue to build a better future. Which everyone will benefit from. Like solar and wind are now available for everyone at economic prices, as an industrial scale market which allows for those low prices was created by many years of subsidies, when it didn't exist yet.
- adventured 8y ago
  > But Norway uses the oil revenue to build a better future. Which everyone will benefit from. How do you get to that? Norway has extremely tight immigration policies. They hardly let anybody in. Their multi trillion dollar bounty will primarily benefit a few million people, while they export extreme per capita pollution; their per capita oil production is consistently among the top five or six globally. What spectacular technological breakthroughs and exports has Norway produced from their oil riches (in clean energy or otherwise)? I'm not aware of any. Contrast them with neighboring Sweden for example when it comes to technological innovation. Norway isn't that type of culture, they're much more akin to the insular, small kingdom petro states of the Middle East. You don't have to take my word for it, you can look at their primary industries, their nobel production, their scientific output and their technology invention.

davedx 8y ago

This is really great news. Shipping and aviation are two sectors that contribute huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, but have traditionally been left out of climate change action plans. I can't wait to take my first electric flight!

jillesvangurp 8y ago

Electric planes still have a few challenges ahead but basically technical progress seems to make short haul electrical flight feasible within the next decade. The reason this is being pursued by so many companies is that electric planes solve a lot of problems and represent an enormous disruption to the aviation industry. Modern air planes are very complex and expensive to operate and need a lot of maintenance. The cost of operating them is completely dominated by fuel cost, maintenance overhead, and expensive taxes and fees at airports related to noise and pollution. With electrical engines, all of this changes. They are light and simple and tend to have a long operational life with very low maintenance requirements. Recharging batteries is extremely cheap compared to burning tons of fuel (literally). Filling up an A321, which takes 24K liters of kerosene, will take you somewhere between 10 and 15K and gets you a range of around close to 8000 km. Most flights are much shorter than that meaning a lot of their weight and range is redundant. Also, you burn a lot of fuel on takeoffs and most planes need to get up high to get to an economical fuel burn rate to cruise. So you pay a huge price for getting all that weight up on every take off. Electrical planes don't need to get up that high and can cruise efficiently at both low and high altitudes. Once cruising, operating them as a glider is actually feasible as well because you can safely turn the engines off and on again (unthinkable with a jet).

emptyfile 8y ago
I really don't get it, if batteries are too expensive and bulky to get +500 km out of a car, what kind of range can you get with a plane?? Wouldn't it add a ridiculous amount of weight compared to kerosene.
- Arnt 8y ago
  Read the article. Key quote. “A lot of the flights here are only 15 to 30 minutes.” Those planes don't go 500km. They go up, fly a short stretch over some complicated terrain, down. That's it. As to why: Kerosene isn't really an option any more. We have a climate problem, and in this generation, not some future generation.
  - 8y ago

yason 8y ago

It it still quite a lot of energy needed from batteries to maintain airspeed that produces sufficient lift. For short flights, a crossover between an airship and airplane might be an interesting idea. Economic and technical arguments might shoot it down but I'm just contemplating here. If there was a balloon attached to the body of the plane that would provide most of the lift the electric motor could just drive the propellers or motor fans for mostly forward propulsion. The overall speed could be slower because the wings wouldn't have to convert airspeed to so much lift, saving energy. On short haul flights the speed wouldn't be a big problem. The plane wouldn't thus rise up directly like airships: the balloon would only give most of the lift required for flight. Large but light wings would provide the remaining bit of lift starting from slow speeds and the plane could thus basically behave more like a normal plane, taking off and landing as usual albeit at significantly slower speeds, figuratively as if the plane was swimming in low gravity or, alternatively, 10x denser air. A balloon would obviously introduce a lot of aerodynamic drag but since the balloon would only help in lifting the plane it could be a bit smaller. We could also build it into an aerodynamic shape instead of a traditional balloon, and we could integrate parts of the helium filled balloon onto the plane itself. For example, we could give the small plane huge biplane wings made out of light-weight steel mesh with helium-filled pods inside. Edit: Similar idea in https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=188&v=oxotOEZCh8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=188&v=oxotOEZCh8... where 60% of the lift comes from the helium and 40% from aerodynamic forces.

PopeDotNinja 8y ago

Real Engineering did a cool video on electric planes a few weeks ago. https://youtu.be/VNvzZfsC13o https://youtu.be/VNvzZfsC13o