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 a

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.